


Fearless and Therefore Powerful

by CasinoLights



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Permanent Injury, Smut in chapter 12, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-03-05 15:19:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18831307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasinoLights/pseuds/CasinoLights
Summary: “He knows. He knows about… this and he’s going to use it against you, I know it.”Her eyes grow cold as she looks up at Staci. “He can try. Every time he hurts one of us, he just gives me another reason to kill him.”“You shouldn’t have come,” he breathes, fingers trembling on her skin. “You could’ve stayed away and you would’ve been safe.”“Safe doesn’t matter to me if I don’t have you.”Deputies Pratt and Rook have been “friends with benefits” for a while now, and the arrangement is working quite well for them. But if one disastrous date isn’t enough to make them question their relationship, they’ll soon face a much greater threat: the Reaping of Eden’s Gate. Somehow, they’ll have to fight their way back to each other despite the efforts of the eldest Seed - who’s about to learn just how much punishment a bond can take.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Regarding the "Additional Warnings" tag I added, there are scenes of both physical and psychological trauma. Essentially, I went pretty in-depth about what Staci went through in Jacob's captivity. So... yeah, expect pain. I will provide author's notes with warnings on each chapter that contains any of these themes so no one is caught off-guard. If anyone has any specific triggers they'd like me to mention, leave a comment (anonymously is fine!) or send me a message or ask on my tumblr, @casino-lights.  
> Happy reading!

> _“Man! You may hate, but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness forever. Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains—revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict."_
> 
> \- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, _Frankenstein_

* * *

**Prologue**  
****

Pratt was acting up again one day in late spring, when the mud on the roads was fender-deep and the sun gave everyone red arms and pinched faces. Hudson was about ready to strangle him as he popped his nicotine gum to the rhythm of the oldies on the radio. Rook could tune it out - it’s classic Pratt, she told herself, hates the quiet so he fills it in the most annoying way he can think of - but once he started banking paperclips off her back, she had to take a stand.

“Pratt!”

“What? It’s target practice.”

“Stop doing that.”

His lips curled up in a grin and he held his hands up innocently. But the glint of a silver paperclip pinched between his thumb and forefinger was not promising, and Rook only glared at him.

“Staci Pratt, I will tell your mother.”

His mouth fell open in an _O_ of surprise, but the smirk quickly returned. As soon as she went back to her paperwork, he bounced the paperclip straight off the back of her head.

“ _¡Para!_ ”

He started laughing and dropped his last paperclip into the jar on his desk. “Aww _, no eres divertido._ ”

“ _Cabrón._ ”

“Guys!” Hudson snapped, pinching the bridge of her nose. “If you’re gonna insult each other, do it in English.”

Rook quickly apologized, then jabbed her finger at Pratt. “You… you… horse-face.”

He nearly choked on his gum. “Horse-face? _Horse-face_? You can call me an asshole in Spanish but the best you got in English is _horse-face_?”

“I don’t like swearing in English,” she said with a pout. “It’s dirty.”

“Shit, Sasha,” he chuckled as he stood up and stretched his arms. “That’s… actually adorable.”

“Oh, my god, guys, I am begging you,” Hudson looked at Rook desperately. “Please, _please_ flirt somewhere else. I just ate.”

Pratt disappeared into the closet where they kept personal effects, and both Hudson and Rook gave a sigh of relief as they returned to their work. Sasha was patiently filling out release papers for one Charlemagne Victor Boshaw IV when the W turned into a wild scribble as a pair of hands suddenly clasped her shoulders and a muffled voice called “ _neigh!”_ into her ear.

Since poor Sasha’s fight or flight instincts always defaulted to _fight_ , she whirled around and swung a closed fist toward Pratt, who recoiled in shock as her hand connected with the rubber snout of his horse mask.

He tugged it off, cackling, and smoothed his hair back as Sasha stood up to face him - not like she properly could with their foot-tall height difference.

Luckily for Pratt, she laughed too, and she yanked the mask away from him. “Why do we even _have_ this?”

“Dunno,” he confessed. “Just saw it in the closet this morning.”

Hudson, her head in her hands, mumbled wearily, “Came from a 390 they found out by Rae-Rae’s. Some jackass was trying to scare Boomer again.”

Pratt’s face twisted into a disgusted expression. “He puked, didn’t he?”

“Yep.”

Rook dropped the mask and wiped her hands on Pratt’s shoulder. “Ew. Drunk puke.”

“Really brings people together.” Pratt took her hands in his and pulled her toward the door. “C’mon, you’ve been sitting there all day. Your feet are gonna fall asleep.”

Reluctantly, she followed him, though she had to quicken her pace to keep up with his gangly legs, and he led her round the back of the station.

“Pratt, what—”

“Just do what I do.” He clambered up atop a parked cruiser, then the electrical shed, before finally scaling the roof. “The view up here is gorgeous.”

“We have mountains, y’know,” said Sasha as she struggled up the shed. “Why don’t you— _oof_ —just look… oh, wow.” Her eyes widened as she reached the roof and could finally take in the sun setting between the mountains in the distance. “It’s _beautiful_. I never even noticed.”

“Yeah, see? Told you it was gorgeous.” Pratt looked insufferably smug. “Can’t see it from the road thanks to that big, shitty billboard with John Seed on it.”

“I hate that thing even _more_ now.”

“I know, right? Like, okay, we get it, you’re handsome, you don’t have to remind us every ten miles.”

“ _Handsome_?”

He opened and closed his mouth several times as he attempted to form a reply. “I mean… _I_ don’t think so… I just thought _you_ thought so…”

“Nothing like you, _papi_.”

Pratt blushed furiously and rubbed his nose as he tried to shield his cheeks from her view.

“How’d you even find this view, anyway? What exactly were you doing on the roof?”

He cleared his throat. “Joey complained about me smoking by the door - which is where _everyone_ takes their smoke breaks, but whatever - so I came out back, but then she complained about me smoking by her car, so I figured, fuck it, if I can’t smoke on the ground, I’ll smoke on the roof.”

Sasha folded her arms and narrowed her eyes crossly. “I thought you quit.”

“I’ve ‘quit’ six times. Never sticks.”

“Didn’t I give you some incentive this time?”

He glanced down at her. “What kind of… wait… oh, fuck. _Fuck_. I forgot. Can we start this one over again?”

She shifted her eyes coyly to the side. “I dunno, is it gonna _stick?_ Or will I just have to come up with something else in a couple weeks?”

“Depends on the deal,” he said with a smirk. “How long do I have to wait before I get the prize?”

“How long does it take to stop getting cigarette cravings?”

“Pfft, those fuckers _never_ go away.”

“Well, then, you’ll be waiting an awfully long time.”

His eyes widened and he chuckled nervously. “Uh, I mean… I’ll always have cravings… they’ll get better though. After a day.”

She looked at him skeptically. “Let’s try this one. What’s the longest you’ve gone without a smoke?”

He thought back to the first time he “quit.” “Two and a half weeks,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Then someone offered me one and I said ‘okay,’ like a moron.”

Sasha laughed quietly. “Well, how about this? If you can make it two months without a cigarette - not a _single one_ \- then _you_ …” she began to walk her fingers up his chest— “will get a _surprise_ …” she leaned in close enough for him to smell her chapstick— “from _me…_ in your _squad car._ ”

He swallowed hard. “S-shit, Sass… you’re goin’ all the way this time.”

“Mm-hmm. No lung cancer on my watch.”

“Look at you…” he mumbled. “Always taking care of me.”

“I have been since we were kids,” she said with a soft chuckle. “

He rubbed the back of his neck and chewed his lower lip before inhaling deeply. “I was wondering if, um… maybe… sometime… do you wanna go get some… err, I mean, maybe you’d like to do… something? With me?”

“Staci Pratt, are you asking me on a date?”

“I… guess?” At her unimpressed look, he cleared his throat and said, more confidently, “Yes, I am. I’d like to go on a date with you.”

She reached for his hand and he gave it gladly, despite his sweating palms and trembling fingers. Her first two fingers curled around his, forming a soft link that hung at their sides. “Staci, I would _love_ to go on a date with you. What did you have in mind?”

“What did I—” Realization dawned on his face and his expression morphed into shock. “Fuck. I mean… I, uh, I didn’t actually… plan that far ahead. I kinda thought you’d say no.”

Sasha giggled and squeezed his fingers. “How about a picnic?”

“Great. Yes. I mean, definitely. I love picnics. That was my first choice, hundred percent.”

“I know this great little spot out past Nick Rye’s place.”

He grinned - more relieved than teasing. “I’ll swing by and pick you up. Sound okay?”

She nods.

“Good, okay. Good. Eight tomorrow night?”

“Six. I wanna catch the sunset.”

_Shit_. He wasn’t off his shift until eight. But… the lady said six, and God help anyone who said Staci Pratt wouldn’t bend over backward for a lady. Especially if that lady was Sasha. “Six it is.” He figured the last two hours wouldn’t hurt. Nothing happened in Hope County, anyway.

He was very, very wrong.

From the get-go, Sasha knew something was up. Sure, Staci combed his hair and - for once - didn’t smell of cigarettes, which was a glorious feat in itself, but he was still wearing his uniform, radio and all, while she sported a sundress with purple polka dots. Not exactly on the same page. Not to mention the fact that he showed up in his _patrol car_. Something was definitely wrong.

Awkwardly, he shuffled his feet as he stood outside her door. “So, um… I forgot to mention this, but I’m kinda… sorta… still working. Until eight.”

“Staci!”

“It’s okay!” He held up his hands placatingly, one bearing a bottle of sweet rosé. “It’s okay. I made sure I was released from all the office shit and I did all my paperwork early—”

“You gave it to Joey, didn’t you?”

“I… gave her a couple pages.”

“A couple?”

“…Twenty-nine.”

“ _Staci!_ ” Sasha nearly slammed the door on him right then. But heaven help her, he was so, _so_ cute.

“It’s not a big deal! All I have to do is keep the radio on, okay?” He reached for her hand, linked their fingers, and squeezed them reassuringly. “Nothing ever fucking happens around here, anyway. I promise, nothing is gonna ruin this for us.”

“I just… I thought we weren’t going to bring work into this.”

“We’re not.” His voice was lower, softer, and his eyes were sincere. “Just because it’s a… _date_ -type date doesn’t mean we’re ‘emotionally compromised’ or any other shit like that. I mean… we’re already fucking, right?”

She cringed inwardly at the harshness of the word. “The rules are in place so we don’t endanger ourselves or others—”

“Sasha, I would take a bullet for you even if we were still just friends _without_ the benefits. I’m a cop. That’s my job.”

“I just… don’t want to mess anything up for you.” She drew herself toward him and laced their fingers together. “If you have to work, you should work.”

“Ah, Whitehorse loves me. I’m safe.”

She snorted loudly and he made a face in response.

“Just get in the car, _papi_.”

He saluted her sloppily. “Yes, ma’am, Miss Rook, ma’am.”

They hadn’t even touched their sandwiches before their hands were wandering, sprawled out on a blanket decorated with rocket ships as the sun blinked below the horizon. Their little “friends with benefits” deal had been going smoothy, despite the fact that she joined the sheriff’s department just a few months after they set it up. Now here he was, fumbling his way through a kiss as if he’s never touched her before. Admittedly, he tried to avoid kissing her on the lips each time they slept together; it was supposed to be purely physical, and he knew a kiss would lead to snuggling and snuggling would lead to deeper kisses and deeper kisses would lead to an accidental _I love you_.

But now here they were, kissing so passionately it felt like they could never part, and _oh_ , _God_ , how he loved the feeling of _rightness_ that came with it.

Her fingers unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt and brushed his collarbone, and he _moaned_. It reverberated within her mouth and she gasped, and they had a sweet-hot back and forth of sultry noises that led to him on his back with her lips on his neck. She left bruising kisses all across his skin, and her weight on his chest was sending heatwaves through him, and he doesn’t remember his cargos ever being this _tight_ —

His eyes close on their own as she sucks on the delicate skin between his neck and his clavicle. “Oh, fuck, _fuck_ , this is even better than last time…”

She laughed softly, seductively, and then…

Someone else laughed, too. A couple someones, actually.

Sasha pulled away abruptly, brow furrowed, and Staci pushed himself up on his elbows as the radio on his shoulder hummed with the chuckles of _everyone else on duty_. He stared at Sasha in horror for a split second before he scrambled for the switches, and the feedback screeched through the air with his vicious curses as he flicked the radio off, then on again and finally off for good in his panic.

Sasha was absolutely speechless, but she forced words anyway. “I… Staci, I… I’m so—”

“Don’t,” he snapped, his face buried in his hands. “Just fucking don’t.”

“I’m so sorry,” she finished. She knelt before him, hand on his knee, and reached for his face.

He almost pulled away, but he dropped his hands and let her touch him gently. “They’re gonna be laughing at me for-fucking-ever,” he muttered miserably. “I’m never fucking living this down.”

“Staci, it’ll be alright.” Sasha had no idea how, but faith had to be enough, right? “They-they probably don’t even know you’re with me.”

He shook his head bitterly. “The fuck they don’t! What if they heard you?”

Her optimism failed her. “ _Dios mio, mi papa_ …”

Staci’s eyes widened. “Oh, fuck. Oh, shit.” His head fell against her shoulder. “If your dad finds out… fuck, I’m dead. I am _so_ dead.”

This time, she couldn’t even think of anything to say. She just tucked his hair behind his ear and rubbed his knee until he drew himself away from her.

His radio light flickered on and he rolled his eyes. “Fuck. I’m fucked. I can’t just _not_ answer it.”

Sasha checked her watch. 7:48.

“ _Fuck_.” Staci sighed and turned the radio back on. “Uh… this is Pratt.”

It was Joey Hudson. With any luck, she’d be kind—

“Hey, love machine, something’s coming and it probably isn’t you.”

—Or not.

“Fuck off, Hudson—”

“No, Pratt, I’m actually serious. Someone stole a crate full of engine parts from Nick Rye’s hangar and they’re driving right past you.”

“Oh, shit. I’ll head them off at the bend by the silo. Over.” He clambered to his feet and nearly tripped on the blanket. “Shit. _Shit!”_ He turned to Sasha, looking so apologetic she didn’t even know it was humanly possible, and he gestured hopelessly at the abandoned picnic. “Sass… fuck, I am so sorry, I don’t—”

“It’s okay, I can deal with this. You go get the bad guy.”

“I—should I take you with me? You’re not walking all the way back—”

She interrupted him again. “Then everyone _will_ know! You need your car anyway. Go!”

“But you - you’re in heels. Fuck, Sass, I’m so fucking sorry, I’m—”

“Stop it, it’s fine. I’ll be okay. Now go! You’ll lose them!”

He backtracked to his patrol car, looking desperately from the blanket to her and back again until she waved her hands frantically.

_“Go!”_

He peeled out, and Sasha could only imagine him taking down a thief with his bruised neck and half-open shirt and lipstick-stained cheeks. All she could do was take off her shoes and pinch them in one hand while she tucked the blanket under her arm and carried the picnic basket in the other.


	2. Premonitions

Sasha looks up from her phone, snowy and crackling, as Whitehorse converses with Nancy from dispatch.

“Maybe we should’ve brought _her_ ,” mutters Pratt, and Hudson shoots him a dirty look. “What? Nobody would fuck with Nancy.”

“I’m sure that’s the _only_ reason you’d rather have Nancy here,” Hudson replies with a smirk.

“Shut up,” he grumbles.

Sasha looks back down at her phone and tucks it into her pocket. She sighs quietly, even as Staci glances at her with an apologetic expression, and restricts herself to staring out the window. Joey keeps teasing him, and he keeps glaring at her.

This is how it goes, has gone, _will_ go until the sting of embarrassment from their disastrous date fades from memory. But knowing Joey, she’ll keep this one close to heart for a long time.

Deputy Marshal Marilyn Cooke sits beside Sasha, eyes closed and head back against the seat.

“Heights?” Sasha asks quietly, touching Cooke’s shoulder to get her attention.

“Fuckin’ helicopters,” she replies curtly. “If God wanted us to fly, He’d’ve given us wings.”

“Relax,” says the marshal seated across from Sasha. “We’ll go in, arrest this psychopath, and come right back out.”

Hudson and Cooke sigh simultaneously.

“This is a bad idea,” Pratt mutters as they descend into Joseph Seed’s compound.

As soon as they touch down, Whitehorse looks at his deputies and the marshals and he sternly delivers their orders: do it clean, do it quiet.

Sasha hops out of the chopper and rounds the front of it, casting a glance up at Pratt. She gives him a wan smile, which he returns as best he can. Before Hudson can deride either of them, Sasha reaches for Pratt’s hand. Her first two fingers curl around his like two links of a chain, and she nods once at him before letting go.

“Watch your back,” he says as Whitehorse beckons her away.

They disappear between the houses in the compound, and then Staci is alone in a sea of unsettled cultists. He taps his fingers against the console and tries not to look as anxious as he feels, but the longer the others are gone the harder it gets to keep up the facade. The cultists can feel it too, and their dogs bark louder and faster as their murmuring gets more hurried and desperate.

Something’s not right. Maybe they really shouldn’t have come here. And now Sasha’s in there, surrounded by Peggies who are more than willing to die for their Father, and all Staci can do is stare at his hands.

He sees them again a few minutes later, walking painfully slowly toward the chopper with Joseph Seed in tow. Sasha has her gloved hand on his shoulder, guiding him forward, keeping her eyes on the chopper as if nothing else matters. The Marshals are agitated, Hudson is looking around wildly, and Whitehorse is leading them all with his fingers curled around his pistol.

So much for “no guns.”

Pratt’s had the engines primed since they landed, and he switches the rotors on as soon as his team comes into view. Just as they’re spinning up, a gunshot sounds, and he whips his head around to see the Marshals, then Whitehorse, then Hudson firing at Peggies wielding shovels and rakes.

“Now!” Burke yells. “Get us in the air _now_!”

But Sasha isn’t anywhere near the chopper yet, and the Father is dragging his heels.

Burke leaps into the seat next to Pratt. “ _Now_ , deputy!”

Reluctantly, Pratt pulls up, and just as the runners lift off the ground, Sasha pushes the Father into the chopper and leaps in after him. She’s practically sitting on Whitehorse’s lap while Peggies launch themselves at the helicopter. One grabs hold of Sasha’s ankle, but she kicks him off, saved only by Whitehorse’s arms latched around her stomach like a seatbelt. Another tries to pull the Father out, but the Deputy Marshal shoots her and she falls to the ground.

And one more, the last one still clinging to the helicopter, thrusts himself up the windshield and straight into the top rotor blades. Blood splatters across the cockpit, several alarms blare at once, and the last thing anyone in the chopper hears is Pratt hastily reciting a Hail Mary.

When he comes to, he feels… heavy. His vision is blurry and his ears are ringing, and everything feels hot and sticky. Faintly, he hears Whitehorse talking. And maybe someone else?

“—out of here…”

“…Everything is unfolding according to God’s plan…”

“Sasha! Joey! Staci! You _have_ to wake up!”

_Sasha…? Shit, Sasha!_

Staci fumbles with his seatbelt and his body collides painfully with the ceiling of the chopper - which is now the floor, considering the twisted wreckage they’re all trapped in.

From outside, the Father’s voice rings clearly through the trees. “ _Begin the Reaping!_ ”

“Oh, shit, fuck, dammit—” Pratt looks back at Sasha, who’s unconscious on the floor. “Fuck, please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead…” He reaches back and shakes her viciously, rattling her against the seats she’s been stuck between, and she blinks her eyes open blearily at him. He smiles at her for a second, and she returns the expression, their eyes locking as tender warmth spreads through them both.

He curls his first two fingers around hers, though they’re sweaty and shaking. “You’re okay,” he breathes. “We’re okay.”

And then a strong hand clamps around his ankle.

His fingers snap out of hers, and she screams his name as he’s yanked out of the chopper. He claws at his abductor and digs his feet into the dirt, and as the tugging becomes more insistent, he kicks back with all his might. The blow lands with a solid-sounding _thud_ and the man holding him falls painfully to the ground.

Staci scrambles to his feet and runs, but he doesn’t make it more than four feet before something hits him in the head and he falls flat on his back. A cultist with a shovel, one with nasty teeth and a matted beard, looms over him threateningly. Staci spits up at him, curses in Spanish, and immediately regrets it as the shovel smacks down hard on his nose and his cartilage crunches loudly.

Over the sound of his own pained shouting, he hears the Peggie rasp, “We’ve got a fighter on our hands. Take him to the Grandview.”

From the corner of his eye, he watches helplessly as Joey and Whitehorse are dragged out of the chopper along with him. But there’s no sign of Sasha or the two Marshals. If they made it out - if even _one_ of them made it out - they could get out of here and bring in the National Guard. They could rescue him and Hudson and Whitehorse. Worst case, they could… avenge them.

The shovel comes down again on Staci’s head, and the world goes black around him.

* * *

He dreams of the first time he killed someone. It was mid-summer, a month or so before his horrendous date with Sasha, and he’d intercepted someone with a combat knife in the Lamb of God church. Now, most folks in Hope County had weapons - it was a fact of life. But this guy, well… this guy had it for a reason, and it had _nothing_ to do with hunting season. So Staci put on his Law Enforcement Voice and very politely told the man to relinquish his weapon. There were no names called, no insults flung, no improper demands, just a civil conversation between two people. One of the two people just so happened to carry a knife, and the other had a gun. 

And when the one with the knife lunged at the one with the gun, the one with the gun fired it.

_He knocked on Sasha’s door that night, bandages around three of his fingers for the paper cuts he got while filling out page after page of incident reports. He dropped his cigarette in the terra cotta pot by her door and she answered the knocks with a sleepy smile and a well-loved teddy bear in her arms._

_God, but she was cute that night. A blue pajama top and little white shorts decorated with hummingbirds, hair disheveled, eyes half-lidded, lips upturned lazily… Staci almost forgot how horrible he felt as he looked at her in the yellow glow of her buzzing porch light._

_“Stace? I told you I couldn’t this week…”_

_“What?” It hit him a moment later. He never visited her that late unless they had…_ plans _. “N-no,” he stammered quickly. “It’s… it’s not that…”_

_She rubbed her eyes. “What’s wrong?”_

_He fidgeted with the hem of his shirt. His hands were raw from scrubbing them over and over again to get the blood off, but it’ll never come off, they’ll never be clean…_

_“I, uh… I…” He sighed and shook his head. “This is so fucking stupid, Sass, I’m sorry.”_

_She reached her hand out for his. “It’s okay. What’s the matter?”_

_He doesn’t let her touch him. He’s too dirty, too bloody, even if he doesn’t look it. “Can… we go inside?”_

_She nodded. The minute he sat down, she filled a teapot with water and started boiling it on the stove. “Did something happen?”_

_The words spilled from his mouth like vomit. “I murdered someone.”_

_Her gasp was loud in the silence of the room._

_“I… there was a call, a guy with a knife… I was just trying to… I didn’t want to…”_

_She knelt in front of him and clasped his hands tightly. “Oh, Staci… you know that isn’t murder, don’t you? You didn’t have a choice. It isn’t your fault.”_

_His eyes shut and he felt his own sobs choking up in his throat. He kept them down as best he could, but he voice wavered as he spoke again. “I told him to put it down. I kept… telling him…”_

_“No… no, he came at you. You just did what you had to.”_

_“I aimed for the shoulder, I… I was trying to disable him or hurt him or-or-or anything else but kill him!” His fingers shook and his legs bounced anxiously. “But he moved, goddammit, why did he have to move—”_

_“Look at me.” She cupped his jaw in her hand, soft and cool in the heat of the summer air. “It’s not your fault. I promise you, it’s not your fault. Everyone makes choices, and he made his.”_

_“But I made mine too, and I killed someone!”_

_“In self-defense. Every action has an equal and—”_

_“—opposite reaction, I know, okay? I know, but I can’t just… I should’ve… I could’ve done something else.”_

_Gently, she rose to her full height and cradled his face in both her hands. “People say that about so many things. Everyone can do something else. There’s always something else. Believe me, if we could rewind life, I would do so many things over again.” Her smile was sad and distant, like a bitter memory had worked its way past her lips. “All you can do is make different choices next time.”_

_“I don’t want there to_ be _a next time.” He opened his eyes and looked up at her tearfully. Shit, he didn’t want to cry in front of her, not like this, but here he is with his chin quivering and his voice cracking._

_“I hope there won’t be.” She hugged him, arms around his neck and head tucked beneath her chin. “But you did what you had to, Staci. You are a good person. This doesn’t change that.”_

_He choked on his own breath. “Good people don’t… kill other people, Sasha.”_

_She looked into his eyes, and he fell still under her deep gaze. Patiently, she said, “We can’t save everyone, but that doesn’t mean we stop trying. That’s what makes us the good guys.”_

The kettle began to whistle, louder and louder and louder until Staci snaps his eyes open… and he realizes he isn’t in Sasha’s house anymore as a training whistle shrieks through the air.

* * *

Over the years, Jacob Seed has seen a lot of people come and go. More often than not, the weak ones can be made strong. It’s the ones who are already strong he has to watch out for. Those, he needs to weaken - seemingly against his own creed - in order to strengthen to his specifications. He only wants them strong in one way. _His_ way. And his way requires weakness enough to surrender to him. 

 _Only_ him.

So when a young deputy of the Hope County Sheriff Department is dragged into his room, kicking and spitting, Jacob just sighs and folds his arms. This one’s going to put up a fight. He’ll lose, of course, but still…

“And here comes the deputy.” Jacob stands as his men force the new meat into a chair and strap him down. “One of my boys has a nasty bruise because of you.”

“He got what he fucking deserved,” the deputy sneers.

Jacob smacks him down with the back of his hand. “He also said you had quite a mouth on you. We’ll be correcting that.”

“You _fucking_ bastard.”

Another smack, this one harder. Jacob only shakes his head. “Tsk. You’re a firebrand, I’ll give you that.” He bends down to meet the kid’s eyes. “But trust me, deputy, this is going to go a lot better for you if you ease up.”

He spits in Jacob’s face. “ _¡Maldito bastardo!_ ”

This time, Jacob chuckles dryly and wipes his cheek. It’s nothing new. Plenty of his recruits do this at first. But that doesn’t mean he won’t punish them for it. He hits the deputy with a closed fist, hard enough to crack a bone, and it lands right on his already twisted nose.

He screams in pain and struggles helplessly against the restraints on the chair. The split on his nose is reopened, oozing blood, and it mixes with the dirt on his face as it drips down.

“This is just the first trial, kid. You pass when you answer my question. Now… how old are you?” Jacob asks, motioning to one of his men for a notepad.

The deputy grunts and spits blood at the floor. “ _Xínaaw,_ ” he hisses between clenched teeth.

Jacob pauses, narrowing his eyes. “That’s not Spanish.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” He grins with bloody teeth and chuckles before coughing. “I can call you a bastard in three different languages.”

“Tell me what that one was.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Jacob sighs. “I’ll figure it out later. But for your insubordination…” He punches the deputy one more time, then lets his hands fall back to his sides. The impact is already swelling red when he returns to his first question: “How old are you?”

This time, he doesn’t say anything at all. His head is hanging low, and his eyes are leaking tears from the pain.

Jacob curls his hand around the deputy’s neck and squeezes so hard his eyes pop open in fear. “One more time,” he growls. “How… old… are… you?”

As his fingers scrabble for purchase at the arms of the chair, he chokes, “Fuck… t-twenty… six.”

Jacob lets go, expression flat and eyes cold. “Good.” He reads the name off the kid’s uniform and scribbles it on the notepad before handing it back to his soldiers. “Get him ready. I think he’ll make a good soldier.”

Twenty-six year-old S. Pratt hangs his head loosely in the chair, face a mess of blood, grime, and tears. He might not be easy to break, but Jacob can tell it’ll be worth it in the end.


	3. Gone To The Dogs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter marks the first time Staci is subjected to one of Jacob's trials, so you can expect brief mentions of general violence, Bliss injection, and physical restraint.

When Deputy Rook wakes up in a dusty bunker, the first thing out of her mouth is, “Dad?”

A rough voice repeats the word, and she hugs herself tightly as she looks up at the man before her. “…Dutch?”

“Deputy. You really stirred up the pot this time.”

She doesn’t even blink before she asks, “Where’s my—where’s Sheriff Whitehorse? Where are the others?”

Dutch doesn’t answer her, just points her to a change of clothes and a handgun. The weapon, she accepts. The clothes, she does not.

“I am a deputy of the Hope County Sheriff’s Department,” she says firmly. “And I will have everyone know it. If that makes me a target, so be it.”

Dutch has to admire her determination, if nothing else.

She examines his maps, pinned and marked well, and as he walks her through the three regions, she studies each of the Seeds with a furrowed brow and a bitten lip.

“Do you know where the others are?” she asks again, almost imploringly. “They said they were taking Burke to ‘the Pilgrimage,’ but I don’t know where Hudson and Pratt are.”

Dutch sighs. “Well, kid, if they took Burke to the Pilgrimage, they took him to Faith’s territory.”

“What about Hudson and Pratt?” Her expression steadily shifts from worried to fearful as she hesitantly adds, “And the sheriff?”

“I don’t know, Deputy. I really don’t. If your friends survived—”

“They survived. I can feel it.”

Dutch clears his throat noisily. “ _If_ they survived… then chances are good they’re with the brothers, Jacob and John.”

“But you don’t know which one?”

“They probably each have one of your friends.”

“But _nobody knows_ which ones.”

Reluctantly, Dutch shakes his head. “No, Deputy. Nobody knows.”

“If they each have one of my friends, that leaves the sheriff. Did he escape?”

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, kid, _I don’t know._ ”

Rook rubs her temples and groans wearily. “Fine. I’ll start in the Valley.”

He sighs again. “Listen, just… go to Fall’s End first, alright? Gear up, prepare, help out around there. You’re gonna need backup and a good base of operations if you wanna take the fight to the Seeds.”

She pins a floppy curl back behind her ear and smooths her jacket. As she tucks a pistol into her holster and turns away, she calls back, “Thank you, Dutch. I mean it.”

“Yeah, well… don’t thank me too soon.”

* * *

When he woke up after the helicopter crash, Sheriff Whitehorse saw his daughter.

At first, it was just a blur of braided pigtails streaming through the a misty field he found himself in. Faint though it may have been, it was unmistakeable, and he chased her as fast as his old legs could carry him. But he lost her in the wild brush, and he looked around to see nothing but tall grass on all sides.

Then, it was the flash of a white shift, small enough for a child, and a bloody sock snagged on a dead rose bush. He followed a trail of red splotches to a bush full of vibrant, velvety roses, and a soft voice whispered, “Welcome to the Bliss.”

He took off running in the opposite direction, and he didn’t stop until he was faced with a single desk, sorely out of place in the wilderness. Upon the desk was a radio, covered in vines… but still playing an emergency call he’d heard twenty years ago.

A car accident - one vehicle with an unknown number of occupants - had occurred up in the Whitetail Mountains. When he arrived on scene, well… it was worse than he thought. The casualties consisted of two adults and one large moose, but the empty carseat in the back of the sedan sent a chill up his spine he couldn’t ignore. One of the fastenings had been severed by a shard of glass from the windshield, but the other had been manually unbuckled. A teddy bear with a heart embroidered on its left front paw sat next to the carseat with a cheerful smile on its face, seemingly untouched by the accident.

Whitehorse picked it up and tucked it under his arm. Wherever the occupant of that carseat was, he was certain they’d like to have it back. When he heard a child wailing, he dropped his notebook and ran. He got turned around in the woods a few times, but he followed the sound of the screams until he reached a small cave.

In it was a very angry grizzly bear cornering a little girl, no older than four, with blood stains all over her skin and dress. She looked up at Whitehorse, and when her swollen brown eyes met his, she closed her mouth and fell silent.

As the memory played out before him like a damaged tape reel, distorted and incomplete, Whitehorse rubbed his eyes and clenched his fist. When his fingers curled around something soft, he jumped backwards, and a teddy bear with a heart embroidered on its left front paw bounced into the grass. Gingerly, he lifted it up and examined it, and as his eyes skimmed across its damp polyester fur, he noticed one glaring mistake.

“Wrong foot,” he whispered, more out of surprise than anything else. “The heart’s on the wrong foot.”

A woman growled in frustration somewhere in the distance, and an image of his daughter getting mauled by the grizzly bear flickered in the mist before the entire field spun into darkness.

He awoke in an uncomfortable cot to the sound of his own desperate cries. A woman in a vulgar sweatshirt jabbed a needle into his thigh as two armed men held him down, and he fell unconscious again after another few moments.

The next time he opened his eyes, the woman in the hoodie was pacing in front of his cot. She greeted him by name and introduced herself as Tracey Lader.

“Faith fucks with your head,” she’d spat bitterly, never standing still. “The goddamn ‘Bliss’… most people who get a dose as big as yours don’t come out. You’re lucky.”

He didn’t consider himself lucky, that’s for sure - not with the image of his daughter’s broken body burnt into his mind.

He only slept a precious few hours scattered here and there throughout the first day. Nightmares of a misty field and a woman in white haunted him each time he closed his eyes. Every time he sprinted through the field, chasing his daughter at various ages, he was faced with another warped memory. First it was the time he memorized a few sentences in Spanish in one afternoon using a book borrowed from the school library. The little girl he’d rescued from the crash only spoke Spanish, so he learned how to ask her if she was hurt, if she needed anything, what her name was, and where she came from.

She’d hugged him when he first spoke Spanish to her. She hugged him and didn’t let go.

Next, it was a memory from a few months later. Whitehorse had fudged some paperwork to keep the little girl in Hope County until he could call in a favor from a family lawyer. She was playing with a yellow plastic truck, a handful of marbles, and her teddy bear on the floor next to his feet as the adoption forms were drawn up. The ink hadn’t yet dried when he set his pen to the paper, scribbling a signature and the date in five different places. As he wrote the last one at the very bottom, the pen jolted along with his arm as the little girl wrapped her arms around his legs.

“The date’s wrong,” he whispered to the woman in white, who could hear him from anywhere in the field. “It was October 11th, not 21st.”

Again, she hissed in anger, and this time she flashed an image of his daughter lying dead-eyed in a bear’s jaws before he was sent gasping back to reality.

The last memory he was shown was a glimpse back at her high school graduation. She was dressed in Hope County High’s blue and orange. She graduated valedictorian, class president, most likely to succeed, and an acclaimed member of the cheer squad, and Whitehorse had never been prouder. They asked her to make a speech and she wrote a delightful bit about keeping Hope County safe by being a good neighbor and showing kindness to whomever needed it. And when she got home, she immediately pulled her hair down and kicked off her shoes and played soccer with her father, barefoot in the grass behind their home.

There was nothing wrong with the memory this time. It was perfect. Whitehorse found himself chasing a ball that disappeared when he blinked, then whirling around to find his daughter, now in her teenage form, standing behind him ominously.

Though she was a full head shorter than him, she still caused him to back up instinctively.

“You can’t fight this, Daddy,” she whispered. “You have to stay here. It’s safe. And look! You’re with me!” She twirled, and her dress rippled out around her. “We can be happy here! We don’t have to keep doing these terrible things.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “What… terrible things?”

“We’re killing people. We’re just spreading so much hatred. Don’t you want it to end?” She reached for his hands and held them tightly. “Don’t you want peace? Don’t you want to stay with me?”

He squeezed her hands. “We’re just doing what we have to.”

“But what if we _didn’t_ have to?” Her eyes were brimming with tears as she stared up at him with a deep frown. “Don’t you understand? Don’t you see? If we stay here, we’ll be safe. Forever. We’ll never have to fight again.”

Whitehorse looked down at his daughter’s hands, rubbing his thumb in small circles across her smooth skin. He glanced up, over her shoulder, and a ghostly woman in a white dress seemed to flit in and out of his field of vision. Letting go of his daughter’s hands, he lowered his own to his sides and said, “None of this is real.”

The woman in white screamed and so did Sasha, their voices ringing sharply together in his ears.

The sound lingered long after he awoke, and for days afterward, he’d swear he could see a woman in a white dress out of the corner of his eye.

* * *

Staci’s been in the same chair for the entire day. The goddamn Peggies didn’t let him up for anything. Food, water… bodily functions…

He’s cried twice - _not_ counting the throat-scratching sobs that wracked him after Jacob left - and he’s sure he’s dehydrated by now. He’s so hungry his stomach is practically trying to digest itself, and he’s been holding it for hours. This is their plan? To deprive him of his basic needs? He doesn’t want to admit it, but… it’s working. He so thirsty and he’s starving, God, he’d do just about anything for some food and he has to keep reminding himself he just ate _yesterday,_ but it seems like so long ago. Another lifetime.

The door creaks open and he jumps, his whole body flinching and trying to curl in on itself. The Peggie with the shovel and the broken teeth flashes that ugly smile at Staci as he enters the room, his weapon of choice slung over his shoulder carelessly. He twirls a combat knife between his fingers, and Staci swallows hard as the blade inches toward him.

The man cuts the tape around his wrists and grabs his arm with a painful vice grip, then yanks him up to his feet. “Jacob’s got a plan for ya,” he says nastily, teeth bared. “I hope you make it through. I’m gettin’ sorta attached to ya.”

Somewhere inside, Staci’s beginning to hope he doesn’t.

By the grace of God, the Peggie lets him relieve himself when they’re outside. The light is almost blinding and it’s hardly private behind a scraggly bush and little else, but it’s better than the alternative and Staci knows to take blessings however they come. He’s got a sinking feeling he won’t find many of these small kindnesses under Jacob’s regime. He’s already hanging his head when the Peggie whistles sharply and motions with his fingers for Staci to return.

“Good,” he says, wrapping his thick fingers around Staci’s wrist again. “You’ll get the hang of this soon enough.” He grins as he drags Staci along behind him, marching him to God knows where, and exchanging a few derisive words about his new captive with other Peggies he passes.

He keeps turning his his filthy face back toward Staci, almost as if he’s making sure he’s still there. Maybe he _likes_ checking up on him, seeing how his catch of the day is floundering on dry land.

He’ll get what’s coming to him someday. They all will. For now, that’s all the hope Staci can cling to.

He recognizes the building he’s in, though it takes a while thanks to dim lighting, boarded windows, and furniture strewn about like a tornado hit the place. The Grandview Hotel was always a sort of dream destination for him, even though he’d been several times for both business and pleasure. Most often, he was called in about public intoxication, indecency, or a bar brawl. A couple times, he’d been lucky enough to get a cheap suite during the off-season so he could treat Sasha to a nice night for once instead of just fumbling around in her bedroom. He won a weekend stay once from the Testy Festy’s sharpshooting contest. Grand prize. That was the day Sheriff Whitehorse pulled him aside and told him he’d make a good cop.

Funny how much you think about your life when you’re clinging to what’s left of it.

The Peggie gives Staci’s arm a hard twist and pulls him into a side room, then pushes him down into a chair with bloodstains on the headrest. He pulls leather straps tightly around Staci’s wrists and ankles, then rolls up one of his sleeves to allow access to his veins.

At first, he thrashes as best he can. It only causes the Peggie to tighten the restraints. There’s nothing he can do but clench his teeth as a needle sinks into his arm and some green-tinted, blood-burning, mind-numbing substance is injected into his body.

Over the course of a few more moments, his limbs go limp and his head falls back against the chair. He exhales a painful sigh, drawn out as the Peggie whistles a tune behind him, and a projector whirs to life. A slideshow of predators with bloody jowls and dead or dying prey progresses on the sheet draped lazily on the wall before him, occasionally interspersed with a flicker of a word.

And when Staci closes his eyes, he still sees the words in his mind.

_Train._

_Hunt._

_Kill._

_Sacrifice_.


	4. Ghosts That We Knew

Sasha begins in Fall’s End. The sight of John Seed’s hand around Hudson’s throat had her key in the ignition of a battered pickup before his broadcast even ended, and with no word on the whereabouts of Whitehorse, Pratt, or the Marshal, this was the only lead she could follow. So when she arrived in her hometown with nothing but a pistol and a thin ballistic vest underneath her deputy’s jacket, she realized she _might_ have overestimated her chances of success as she watches at least twelve Peggies swarming the streets.

Fortunately for her, she was about to have a bit of help from above.

“Hey, Deputy.”

A smooth voice with a southwestern drawl crackles through her radio as she stands on the outskirts of town, watching Peggies board up the chapel. When she whirls around to search for the source, she only hears a dry chuckle.

“Yeah, you - the short one in the green. Look up and to your right - nearest building. I’m on the roof.”

Sasha locates the building in question. It’s a general store, the one her father used to take her to for doughnuts and tea. Upon its roof is Deputy Marshal Marilyn Cooke, true to her word, with a sniper rifle perched on the edge.

“You order a couple’a dead Peggies?” Cooke’s smirk is almost audible. “I’m your gal.”

Together, Cooke and Sasha cleared the town. And then, with the help of the slowly growing Resistance, they cleared the Valley. It was just shy of two weeks into the fight that Sasha received word from Dutch that Whitehorse had finally made contact.

“Go find ‘im,” Cooke told her sternly. “I’ll handle Johnny boy myself.”

So now, armed with a compound bow and a peppermint-pink .44 revolver, Sasha finds herself at the gates of the Hope County Jail - the de facto headquarters for the growing resistance. And she’s staring up at her father.

Earl stands a fair distance away from her, just as he did twenty years ago after he’d scared off the bear with a warning shot from his pistol, and he reaches a hand out toward her. “Come here,” he says gently, eyes soft, and no sooner do the words fall from his mouth than she flings herself at him, wet mud and fresh blood be damned.

“Daddy—” she begins, interrupted by a hiccup. “Oh, I was so worried—I tried to go back for you after the crash, I swear, I tried so hard, but I lost my gun and I couldn’t—”

He runs a shaky hand down the back of her head. “Shh. Just… tell me about you right now. Are you hurt?”

She shakes her head and sighs quietly. “I’m fine, I just… they took Joey right out of my hands, and… oh, _Staci_ … I heard him yelling as they dragged him away, and then I-I didn’t hear him anymore…”

Earl wraps his arms tighter around her shoulders. She’s still so small, she only comes up to his chest, and he can’t help but think of her when she was even littler, running around Fall’s End with his hat on and a wooden gun he’d whittled himself.

Now here she is, with her very own badge and a very real gun she’s just proven she isn’t afraid to use. She was already growing up too fast, but this? He’s having enough trouble wrapping his mind around everything going on without his daughter in the middle of it.

Sasha blinks her tears away as she ducks out of the hug, straightening her back and adjusting her uniform. “Okay.” She takes a deep breath and exhales it slowly. “It’s okay. They’ll be okay. Now, um… the Marshal’s deputy, Cooke… she’s going after Hudson. So… I’m going to get Staci back.”

Earl looks at her like she’s confessed to a murder. “You’re gonna _what_ now?”

“They could be doing anything to him, sir.” Her expression has already hardened into an ice-cold mask, and if she’s calling him “sir,” she means business. “I’m almost sure Joseph Seed’s brother Jacob has him, and I’ve heard… _terrible_ things about what he does to his captives.”

His stance changes immediately and he folds his arms. “Absolutely not. You can’t go up there by yourself. It’s too dangerous.”

“With respect,” she says insistently, “I’m not alone.” She gestures up at the yellow plane circling above and waves. Though she can’t see it, Nick Rye waves back from inside.

Earl follows her gaze and then looks back to her with disbelief. “Sasha, you know Kim could give birth any second. She needs him home.”

She scowls bitterly. “As a matter of fact—”

“Don’t you make that face at me.” He slips his hat off and tucks it under his arm after a quiet sigh. “Look, I just… I need you to be careful, alright? I want Pratt to be safe as much as you do. You know that. But you’re my _daughter_. I can’t just send you off into danger like this.”

She doubts he _can_ want Staci safe as much as she does. She isn’t sure it’s possible. But she swallows the thought and replaces it with a promise. “I’ll find him, sir. Wherever he is, I’ll find him.”

“You _need_ to be prepared.” Whitehorse takes in her four-foot, eight-inch frame and he lowers his voice so only she can hear it. “You’re just one person. Jacob has a whole goddamn army.”

“And without that army, Jacob is just one person too. One person who could be doing horrible things to Staci _right now_.”

Both of his hands settle on her shoulders and he squeezes her. “Listen to me. I need you to understand that you are no good to him - or to us - if you’re dead.”

“I know.”

“Don’t do anything stupid. Please.”

“I won’t.”

“But… you do what you can to bring Pratt home.” He lets his arms drop heavily to his sides with a rough exhale. “I don’t wanna think about what he’s going through, wherever he is.”

The look in her eyes is cold, colder than he’s ever seen her. This isn’t Hope County’s best and brightest anymore, the unofficial mascot of the department, the eternal optimist with a bright smile and words of wisdom. This is a freedom fighter with precious little to lose.

He would be proud if he wasn’t downright scared of her. And _for_ her. “Take this,” he says after a moment, handing her his hunting rifle and his last box of ammunition. “Maybe it’ll help, maybe it won’t, but I’ll, ah… I’ll feel better if you’ve got it.”

Her thumb runs fondly over the emblem burnt into the stock - a stallion’s head. “This is… grandpa’s?”

“Sure is. Served him well, served _me_ well.” A thousand words rush to him, things he wants to tell her, things he’s never said - but he settles for just one as he cups the side of her head with one hand. “You may not be a Whitehorse by blood, but you’ll always be one in spirit.”

“Thank you.” She looks from the rifle to his face, shallow and tired, but proud nonetheless. “I’ll take care of it.”

“It’ll take care of you, too. And, hopefully, Pratt.”

“No one will ever lay a finger on him again. Not while I breathe.”

* * *

Jacob is adamant that Staci will not go in a cage, and that confuses him more than anything. If Jacob wants him as bait, why doesn’t he just cage him and set him out somewhere for Sasha to find him?

As he sits with his knees pulled tight to his chest and Jacob blows cigarette smoke at him, he figures it’s because the old soldier can’t agitate him from a cage somewhere in the woods. His personal effects have been scattered across Jacob’s desk, ripe for perusal at his leisure, while Staci has to sit on the ground in the corner and watch as his privacy is violated in increasingly shameless ways.

Currently, Jacob scans the contents of his notebook. Doodles and scattered thoughts fill the pages, more of them than actual notes from criminal investigations. It’s a small miracle that his conscience drove him to erase, scribble out, or otherwise remove anything regarding Sasha - especially the _picnic_ \- but there’s more than enough material there to provide a glimpse into the half-jumbled mind of Staci Pratt.

Jacob comes across a set of poorly sketched chickens and chuckles dryly. “You ever raise these things?” he asks, eyes prying at Staci as he curls up in the corner. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “I, ah… lived with a couple who did. Everyone calls ‘em dumb, but you ever notice how they pick out the smallest one and peck at ‘em? Well, go on. You’ve seen it, haven’t ya?”

Staci nods reluctantly.

“Any one of ‘em that’s sick or hurt, they’ll peck at. They’ll go far enough to kill ‘em.” Jacob shuts the notebook and swivels his chair back toward his desk. “See, that’s the kind of thing that keeps ‘em alive. Chickens in a flock, they’ll all pick on the one that’ll slow ‘em down. The one predators can get at.”

Images of dead livestock flicker through Staci’s mind like the slideshows Jacob subjects him and the other “recruits” to. If he makes it through this, he swears he’ll never eat meat again.

“Same reason kids get bullied,”Jacob continues. “They’re tryin’ to pick off the weak ones.” He smirks darkly as he looks Staci over. “You? Bet you got it pretty bad. Yeah, you’ve probably always been the weak link in the department. Bottom of the food chain, huh?”

Staci lowers his head so it rests on his knees and closes his eyes. He tells himself this enough. He doesn’t need to hear it from Jacob, too. Even if it _is_ right.

Jacob returns to the personal items on his desk and opens up Staci’s wallet. A note is scribbled on a lime green sticky note in someone else’s hand with a smiley face, saying, _“Thank you for last night.”_

Jacob pauses, examining the note carefully before setting it aside. He continues thumbing through the wallet and eventually withdraws a black and white photo strip with three smiling faces on it. Pratt is one of them, flanked on either side by a lovely young woman.

He stands up, making Staci flinch, and crouches beside him with the strip in his hand. “Who are they?”

Staci almost vomits right there and then. The sickly feeling in his stomach at the sight of Sasha’s face is nearly too much to handle.

“They your friends? Other deputies? Hmm? Which one gave you this note?”

He refuses to answer, but Jacob grabs him by the collar and pulls him forward.

“Tell me who they are. I won’t ask again.” He points to the one on the left who’s glancing sideways at the other two. “Who is she? What’s her name?”

Staci exhales slowly and casts his eyes downward in shame. “…Deputy Hudson.”

“Good.” Jacob pats Staci’s knee and gestures to the other woman in the photos. “And her?”

“Oh, _Sasha_ …” He breathes before he remembers where he is and stammers, “Uh—D-Deputy Rook.”

Jacob doesn’t even need to ask about the note again. “So… that’s who’s coming for you.” He stands up and drops the strip at Staci’s feet. “And you’re just curled up on the floor like a baby. _Tsk tsk_. You already failed her.”

Staci reaches for the photo strip with trembling fingers. Just as his hand curls around it, Jacob’s foot comes down hard, and Staci cries out in pain.

“Look at you,” Jacob mutters, staring down coldly as his prisoner’s eyes fill with bitter tears. “You are _weak_.” He raises his foot, only slightly, and Staci snatches his hand back, fingers tight around his pictures.

Jacob locks the door on his way out, leaving his prisoner balled up in the corner of the room with the photo strip. Staci chances a deep, shuddering sigh after Jacob’s heavy footsteps receded down the hall, then crawls toward the desk to see Sasha’s face in the light. He whines plaintively as his eyes follow the curve of her smile, so bright, so warm, so _happy_.

The pictures were taken the day before their first… _escapade_. Staci, Joey, and Sasha had all gone into the city for the day, and at the mall, they paid 75 cents for ten snapshots from one of those cheap photo booths shoved between kiosks for sunglasses and souvenirs. They made as many silly faces as they could, but in one perfect shot, every one of them was smiling peacefully. That one, they saved and had copied so they could all share it. The other nine, they divided up into strips of three photos each.

Staci made sure to claim his three favorites while they were dividing them: the first, a picture of him and Joey each making bunny ears behind Sasha’s head; the second, a shot of all three of them mid-laugh at some joke he’d cracked just in time for the camera to go off; and the third, he and Sasha making what Joey called “those gross lovey-dovey eyes” at each other (even though Staci distinctly remembers staring at a piece of fluff stuck in Sasha’s hair, _not_ making lovey-dovey eyes).

And to think, now he’d do anything, _give_ anything just to see her face again. Just to make those goddamn lovey-dovey eyes at her one more time. God, but he missed her. More than he ever thought he would. More than he ever thought he _could_.

If he could have anything in the world, anything at all, he’d have her. But dragging her to this hell, making her see him like this, subjecting her to Jacob’s cruelty… how could he do that to her if he cares for her?

If he…

 _Because_ he cares for her. Not if. _Because._

He sighs softly and squeezes his eyes shut. “Fuck…” he mumbles, shaking his head. “Took _this_ to make me see it…”

It took this. It really, truly took _this_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like, you can read up on some of the adventures of Deputy Marshal Marilyn Cooke in my other fic, "Snake Eyes, the Most Precious Kind." Find it here! https://archiveofourown.org/works/14692404/chapters/33949191


	5. Don’t Forget To Breathe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, there's some emotional manipulation and some character death that occurs in a Bliss-induced hallucination. It shouldn't be anything *too* triggering, but if my warning is insufficient, please let me know and I'll try to write more in-depth ones! Thank you for reading!

The concrete head of Joseph Seed’s statue comes crumbling down to Earth, and Sasha raises her gloved fist in triumph as Nick whoops with joy. Tracey’s words ring sharply in Sasha’s ears: _the Father ain’t no fuckin’ god. He’s just a man._

Now that Joseph knows she means business, she’ll be hunted across Hope County - and that’s exactly what she wants. Whether she stalks the Peggies back to Jacob or he tries to take her down himself, she’ll still be face to face with him. And she’ll be one step closer to finding and rescuing Staci.

But he has to wait, because when Cooke stomps into the prison with a bruised and bloody Joey Hudson in tow, they immediately become Sasha’s top priority.

Cooke sighs after chugging most of a bottle of water in one sitting, and she uses the last of it to rinse her grimy face. “Fuckin’ Bliss,” she mutters as they sit and catch their breath in the common room. “Almost crashed three times on the way here ‘cause of them fake animals what keep poppin’ up in the road.”

“That’s my fault. Faith is… not happy with me.” Sasha kneels beside Joey’s chair and takes hold of her hand. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Joey smiles weakly at Sasha. “I’ll live. John Seed… that bastard’s dead and gone. Now we have to get _the Father._ ” She says the name with such vitriol, even as Cooke shuffles her feet awkwardly.

Sasha squeezes Joey’s hand. “We will,” she says softly. “But Sta— _Pratt_ is still out there somewhere. I need to find him.”

“John was talking about Jacob’s new ‘recruit,’” Joey sighs quietly. “A deputy who’s fighting back pretty hard. I couldn’t tell if he meant you or Pratt, but now that I see you…”

Whitehorse curses quietly and Tracey rakes her hand through her hair as Sasha stands up. “I can’t wait for them to come to me. I need to go get him.”

“I’m comin’ too,” says Marilyn, snapping another clip of ammo into her belt. “We’ll hit ‘im from both sides. You go in from the east, all quiet-like, I’ll go in hard from the west. We’ll get your friend back, one way or another.”

Sasha looks over at Joey, who nods reassuringly. “Go get our boy,” she says solemnly, holding fast to Sasha’s hand. “I’ll be okay here. I just… I just need some time. You find that son of a bitch Jacob Seed and you _ruin_ him. Don’t just fucking kill him. _Break_ him.”

Marilyn smiles, almost knowingly. “That, I think I can do.”

“You keep each other safe,” Sasha instructs tersely, looking between Whitehorse and Tracey. “If anything happens… just don’t wait for me if you need to get out, okay? I’m not coming back until he’s safe.”

Whitehorse touches her shoulder softly. “Remember what I said, Sasha. Stay alive.”

* * *

Twice, Jacob’s “Chosen” had strapped Staci into a chair, injected him with something that burned in his blood, and turned on a slideshow full of predators with bloody jowls and dead or dying pray. Twice, the opening notes of a song Staci only faintly recognized played and made him dizzy enough to pass out. Twice, he’d risen from the chair, freed from his restraints, and shot his way through the twisted prison he’d been locked in.

And twice, he’d opened his eyes in the same chair, hours later, with more wounds and less resolve as the recording ended in a crackle of static.

Jacob himself oversees the third “trial” about twelve days after Staci’s initial capture. He watches carefully as Pratt is buckled back into the chair and turned toward the slideshow, but before the music starts, he crouches to meet the eyes of his new soldier.

“You’re doing well,” he says, and Staci unfortunately knows he’s being sincere. “You make it through this one, we’ll do something a little different.” He rises to his full height and nods once to the Chosen soldier behind the projector. As it flickers to life, he adds, “I’m expecting good things from you, kid. Don’t disappoint me.”

The music begins, and Staci’s mind empties of everything but the slideshow. Death, and death, and death, and suddenly he’s the one causing it, finally the wolf and not the lamb he used to be, and some part of him _likes_ that. Some deeply buried, long-forgotten, sickly-sticky-sweet part of him that’s never seen the light of day. His eyes are far too accustomed to the blood-haze he’s been thrust into, and as he hoists a heavy machine gun up to his shoulder, he hears Jacob’s voice hum thoughtfully from a distance.

_Hmm. You’re a natural._

Staci bashes the butt of his gun against someone’s skull, and the cracking sound rings in his ears like some twisted alarm. He can taste blood in his mouth. When he looks down at himself, he sees his shirt stained dark red, and he isn’t sure if that blood is his or someone else’s. The targets aren’t disappearing like they usually do - no flash of smoke, no rush of air. Their bodies are just crumpling to the floor as if…

As if they’re truly dying.

Pain pushes past the wall of Staci’s adrenaline and begins to pulse from his stomach upward. He touches his hand to the ache and withdraws his hand to find warm, sticky blood. Fresh blood. So it is his after all.

He glances up - where is he now? This course Jacob has him running changes slightly every time, but he thinks he’s somewhere in the second half. Somewhere close to the end, hopefully. His eyes find a crack of bright light streaming out from beneath a door, and his breath catches painfully in his throat as the ache in his stomach radiates up.

He strips off his deputy’s shirt and ties it tightly around his stomach. It certainly isn’t a bandage, but it’ll have to do. His empty gun clatters to the floor as he breaks into a sprint for the door, leaping over a fallen bookcase.

Someone blocks his path - a woman in a green shirt. She cries out his name as he raises his rifle, and his eyes widen as he refocuses them on her face.

“Sasha?”

“You don’t have to do this,” she says quietly. She reaches out toward him, her fingers extended. “I’m here.”

And then another voice, lower and louder, rumbles in the back of his mind.

_Make your sacrifice._

Staci’s lips part, trembling, as if he means to speak but can’t summon the sound.

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “Take my hand.”

Slowly, he curls his first two fingers around hers. She smiles at him reassuringly, warmly, and the feeling of her skin on his is like a blanket draped over him.

And then blood splashes across his face as a bullet rips through her head. She falls into his arms, lifeless and limp. From behind her, smoke curls listlessly out of the barrel of a red rifle in a scarred hand, and the voice in Staci’s head hisses its disapproval.

_You are weak._

Staci’s vision swims as his blood pools with Sasha’s on the floor. He lays his head flat against her shoulder and stares into her cold eyes, running a shaky hand through her hair. His fingers gather a fistful of her dark curls, and he runs his thumb softly across them. He closes his eyes and his fist… and then her hair twists in his palm.

He opens his hand to find a snake writhing between his fingers, and he yanks his arm away with a yelp of shock. His head doesn’t rest on Sasha’s shoulder any longer; he looks down to find a pair of dirty combat boots instead. He follows them up to see Jacob Seed, arms crossed over his chest, staring down icily at him.

“Make your sacrifice,” Jacob demands. “I won’t say it again.”

Hand gripping his stomach to hold in what precious little blood he has left, Staci relinquishes a shuddering sigh and whines in pain. “I-I don’t… I don’t have anything left…”

As soon as he blinks, Jacob’s gone, his boots replaced by a pistol with a red handle. In the distance, he can hear the old soldier’s voice once again.

_Then_ you’re _the sacrifice._

Staci looks down hopelessly at the gun on the floor. His fingers curl around the handle, just as they’d curled around Sasha’s hand. As the world swims before him and the hauntingly slow notes of _Only You_ begin to grow louder, he lifts the pistol.

Then he presses it to his temple and pulls the trigger.

* * *

Sharky volunteers to drive, and that’s fine by Sasha. He talks the whole way up to the Whitetails, but that’s alright. He’s got the kind of voice that blends into itself after a while, becoming a background hum while Sasha’s mind wanders on its own as she stares blankly out the window.

“I really hope this whole clusterfuck is over before the chili cookoff,” he’s saying, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the radio. “I got this recipe that my cousin Hurky tried out, and he said it’s got so much kick in it, it could burn off someone’s eyebrows.”

The radio dissolves into scratchy static and Sharky searches the channels for a bit before landing on one that sounds clearer.

“ _See the non-believers by the path—_ “

“Oh, no, fuck this noise.” He quickly switches off the radio entirely. “Whew. Cult music. That is an unforgivable offense, right there.” He sighs loudly, shifts his posture, and the smile returns to his face. “See, another reason for this shit to stop soon: I got plans for November. I’m doin’ that No Shave November thing - you know, that thing? That thing. I never done it before but I figured I should try it once and if I grow a killer beard, I’m keepin’ it, man, I wanna rock a big ol’ beard like some of them Peggies. They’re all dumb as fuck, but some got nice beards, I’ll say that…”

Sharky’s voice fades back into that pleasant hum while her mind absently mulls over what he’d said. Sasha looks down at her hand as it rests on her lap, then back up at the world passing by through the window. She exhales quietly, fixating on “No Shave November” for some reason. It didn’t have to make sense. It was just what her subconscious wanted to cling to.

_Staci tried it once - which is likely why she rolled the words over in her head so many times. He went to see her one evening, looking scruffier than usual, and she’d just rolled her eyes playfully and let him in - to both her home and her bed. The beard tickled her more than she’d expected it to as he kissed his way up her leg, coming to rest at her inner thigh. Between his gentle nibbles and his scratchy chin, she was squealing with laughter as he lifted his head to see the joy on her face._

_“What?” He asked, stifling his own laughter. “What’d I do?”_

_“You have got to shave if you’re gonna do that!” Sasha answered, still snickering. “I’m ticklish, you know that.”_

_Slowly, a smirk spread across his face._

_“Ohhhhh no, don’t you dare—“_

_He began to chew on her thigh, right above the inside of her knee where he knew she was the most vulnerable. She shrieked and wiggled in his grasp, giggling helplessly while he tickled her until she smacked at his hands and gasped, “Stop it! I can’t breathe!”_

_He lifted his head again to let her recover. He watched her with a fond smile as she laid back against the pillows, sighing as her residual chuckles faded._

_Softer than he’d intended, he whispered, “Fuck… you are so beautiful.”_

_She smiled at him, her eyes shining with something deeper than lust. “Aw… Stace…”_

_“Sorry…” he muttered. “I know we’re not really supposed to… say stuff like that…”_

_“It’s okay,” she said, running her fingers through his hair. “You’re not… catching feelings, are you?”_

_He swallowed. Was he?_

_Nah. ‘Course not._

_“No,” he answered. “’s all good. We’re fine. Same as we were. It’s easier like this, y’know?”_

_“If you’re sure…”_

_“Yeah, I’m sure. If I wanna… you know…” He winked at her and clicked his tongue. “Then I come to you.” Wiggling his eyebrows, he added, “And then I come_ in _you.”_

_She swatted his hand away from her side, laughing once more. “Staci!”_

_“Speaking of…” he began, lifting himself up on his arms and crawling over her with a smirk on his face. “Shall we?”_

_“You are—mmh—the absolute worst,” Sasha managed as he kissed down her cheek._

_He drew away just for a moment and said with a grin, “I know. Now come on. Show me what you got, Miss—”_

“Rook?”

Sasha startles out of her own thoughts, shaking her head slightly as she remembers where she is. She glances over at Sharky, looking at her with concern from the driver’s seat. “I’m so sorry - were you talking to me?”

“Yeah, but it’s fine - I’m more worried ‘bout you now. You look like hell,” he answers, his brows knitting together. “You okay? I feel like I lost ya for a bit there.”

“I got… stuck in a memory, that’s all.” She forces a smile. “I’m alright.”

“You sure? I mean, could be dangerous to have you out there distracted… Jacob A. Seed’s men aren’t like those brain-dead Angels back in the Henbane.” He shifts, puffing his chest out a bit. “You got me with you, of course - you know I’ll protect ya. Just wanna make sure you’re good, that’s all.”

Sasha’s forced smile turns into a genuine one as she leans across the center console to kiss Sharky’s cheek gently. “Thank you,” she murmurs, touching his hand briefly. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Sharky’s hand hovers over the spot where she kissed him and he smiles sheepishly. “Aw, Dep… I’m glad to be here. I never had a whole buncha _friends_ , y’know?”

“I’m your friend, Sharky.”

“…I know.” He answers with honest gratitude in his voice. “Now! Let’s go piss off Jake ’n’ Bake!”


	6. 3 Rounds and a Sound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning for a quick death mention, worried finger-picking for a brief moment, and a gunshot wound. None of these are described in detail, so it should be just fine!

As Staci lifts his head off the floor, he hears the delicate chords of a piano. He pushes himself up with one arm and touches his head, feeling for blood and finding none. There’s no headache, no wound, no ringing in his ears. Just the quiet sound of an upright piano in an empty room.

In fact, the room in question isn’t anything like the one he’d just seen. No, when he’d closed his eyes, he was in a bloody hallway with Jacob’s messages scrawled on the walls. Now he’s in a space dimly lit by neon signs advertising beer as the gentle music plays in the background.

With a soft grunt of effort, Staci hoists himself into a standing position. He turns around and narrows his eyes as they adjust to the low light level, and then he sees her.

“Sasha?”

“There you are.” She smiles over her shoulder at him as she plays the piano. “I’m glad you came, Stace,” she says, voice as soft as her music. “You look lovely tonight.”

He scoffs. “The fuck I do,” he mutters. But then he looks down, and he sees a pristine pair of shoes, a pressed pair of pants, and a freshly washed shirt. “Shit, I… do?”

Her elegant curls brush the top of her shoulder as she looks back at him. “You do! You’re very handsome.”

He blinks away the last remnants of red fog in his vision and sits on the bench beside her. “What… happened?”

“Don’t be silly,” she says with a laugh. “You did all of this for me, after all.”

“I did? I… what did I do?”

At a pause in the song, Sasha leans over and presses a chaste kiss to Staci’s cheek. “You brought me here, you goofball. You convinced Mary May to give us the whole bar to ourselves for a night, remember?”

Faintly, something stirs in the back of his mind. It’s familiar, but the idea doesn’t feel like his. It doesn’t feel like _anyone’s_.

But if it wasn’t anyone’s, maybe it _was_ his.

“What’s wrong?” Sasha’s brows knit together with worry as she studies his face. “You look so distant.”

He rubs his eyes and blinks down at his clean clothes. “I think I had a… a dream? A bad dream. Was it?”

She takes one of her hands off the piano keys and tucks his hair behind his ear before letting her fingers cup the base of his neck. “Oh, Staci, that’s awful. Are you alright?”

“I… you died.”

“That must have been scary. I’m so sorry, _cariño_.” She gives his shoulder a soft squeeze and continues to play. “But I’m right here now. I’m not going anywhere at all. I’m safe. We’re both safe.”

“Yeah.” Staci allows himself a halfhearted smile and he sits beside her on the bench, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I just can’t shake that dream…”

She rests her head against his shoulder and nuzzles him gently. “It was just a nightmare. It’s alright. And look! Now we’re together again!”

He looks around quizzically, but smiles when he glances back down at Sasha. He stares at her curls, such a rich dark brown; at her eyes, bright and always kind; at her freckles, _God_ , those freckles he used to make fun of them when they were kids but grew to adore them as they grew up. His gaze falls upon her lips, soft, but with a noticeable spot on the left side of her bottom lip where she always grazes her teeth over when she concentrates.

“Staci?”

“Huh?” He realizes he’s been staring at her for too long and shakes his head. “Sorry. Just feels like something’s… weird.”

“The Spread Eagle _does_ feel much different when no one else is in it.” She returns to playing the piano, still leaning against his side happily. “But I like being alone with you. I missed you terribly!”

He shoves back the doubts in his mind and kisses the top of her head. “I missed you, too. God, I really, really did.”

“Ahh, I wish we could stay like this forever,” she says with a contented smile. “Don’t you?”

With strong drinks already poured on the bar behind him, a beautiful woman beside him, and a whole bar to himself, Staci finds himself agreeing. He slips his arm around Sasha’s waist and she leans into him, resting her head on his shoulder as she continues to play… the…

“Wait.” Something snaps into place like a missing puzzle piece, and Staci’s hands curl into fists. “Sasha…”

“What’s wrong?”

“You don’t play the piano.”

She tilts her head at him, then laughs warmly. “But you’d love it if I could. Haven’t you always thought it would be romantic for me to play _Clair de Lune_ for you? I thought it was your favorite.”

Cautiously, Staci rises from the bench and steps backward. “I never told you that. You play the violin, not the piano. And you don’t ever drink anything stronger than desert wine.” He draws his pistol from his side, and when he raises his arms, they’re covered in glistening blood. “You’re not Sasha.”

Her gaze drops and she folds her hands in her lap. “No. I'm sorry. I'm not. But I’m who you _want_ her to be.”

“The fuck you are!” Staci switches the safety off and points his gun at her. “You’re not… you’re not _my_ Sasha. This isn’t the Spread Eagle. And… that wasn’t a dream—ow, _fuck_.” His jaw slackens and his eyes fall as his head begins to throb with pain.

“No, it wasn’t,” she whispers softly. “But it wasn’t real, either.”

When he looks up, she’s not sitting at the piano anymore. He spins around to see her behind the bar cleaning out a beer glass, now assuming the form of Mary May.

“That shit they put in your blood is probably Bliss,” she says plainly, not looking up from her work. “Hell, figure all this could just be a bunch of hallucinations. Or maybe you’re in heaven and we’re all just angels. I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do, hon.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” he asks, glancing at the flickering light in the kitchen.

“Hell if I know.” The voice is new, and when Staci looks in its direction, he sees Hudson leaning against the wall beside the front door.

“Joey? Fuck… are you real?”

“You know I’m not,” she replies dryly. “We’re all in your head, Pratt. Me, Mary, Rook… you think about women way too much, you know that?”

“Shut up.”

“Hey, I’m just a manifestation of your subconscious. Or… something. I don’t know. Point is, you’re really just arguing with yourself here.”

He sighs wearily. “So if you’re in my head, am… am _I_ still in my head too?”

“You’re always in your head, dumbass.”

“You know what I mean.”

Hudson grins, that teasing smirk he’s been haunted by since he signed up. “Yeah. You’re still in your head. You could stay here if you wanted, though. If you didn’t wanna go back out there and fight anymore.”

Staci shuts his eyes and shakes his head. “…Is that… are you saying I could choose to _die_ right now?”

Sasha’s voice rings from the back of the bar. “If that’s what you believe, then maybe it’s true. Everything’s true around here if you believe it hard enough.”

“Yeah, well…” He shuffles his feet and glances at the door. “How about if I believe I’m at home right now and none of this shit ever happened?”

She smiles sadly, looking down at her feet. “I don’t think it works like that. All I know is that you could go through that door, go back to suffering and dreaming of better days, waiting for an escape you might never make… or stay here with me, happy and _safe…_ and forget all about that.”

The prospect is tempting. But as Staci looks back toward the piano, he thinks of Sasha - the _real_ Sasha, not just one he made up in his head - and he knows she’s out there somewhere. Somewhere beyond that door. And in all likelihood, she was tearing up the whole county looking for him.

“You already knew, didn’t you?” Hudson says, standing up straight as she watches him open the door. “You knew you wouldn’t stay when you realized none of this is real.”

He doesn’t answer.

* * *

He wakes in a cot, finally allowed to sleep above the ground for once after completing his final trial. That _one_ fucking Peggie with the nasty teeth and the shovel pulls him to the foyer of the Grandview Hotel, and Staci is made to watch silently as Jacob draws a chalk checkmark next to his name on the blackboard.

Not many people ever finished the trials. Most failed on the third one, the hardest one. But not Staci. He _did it._ He was _strong_.

He is ordered to stand behind Jacob and watch as he breaks in new recruits. Touch nothing, remain still and silent, and assist only when ordered. So he stands with his back to the far wall in the old hotel, he hangs his head and folds his hands, and he bites his own tongue hard enough to draw blood each time his mind wanders. It happens too often. All he can think of is how many times he’s been here before, when everything was better. He would call Sasha and ask her to meet him - a nice view, a couple drinks, just the two of them together… much better than meeting at one of their houses for a quick fuck. It was almost romantic. Each time he went into work the next morning with unkempt hair and the smell of her peppermint lotion clinging to him, Hudson would laugh and Sasha would just… she’d…

_Oh, Sasha._

“Pratt.” Jacob’s voice is a harsh, jarring sound that hurtles him back into reality. He snaps his fingers and points toward the ground beside him.

Staci half-runs toward him, an awkward jog that has him embarrassed already, and Jacob just shakes his head and walks away whistling. He lets the door swing back and hit Staci, who fumbles with it before rejoining him, and he leads Staci to a truck outside.

“You did well,” he says, opening the passenger door for Staci. “But you’re still thinking too much. Eyes up and on the recruits next time. We’re not training your boots, understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Get in.”

Staci scrambles into his seat as Jacob enters the other side, and as he starts the truck, he glances over to see Staci worrying his fingers raw.

“Preoccupied?” he asks pointedly as he pulls out of the hotel parking lot.

Staci jumps at the sound of his voice. Again. “No, sir.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

He rounds his shoulders. “I… yes, sir.”

“You’re scared, aren’t you?”

“…No, sir.”

And this one wasn’t even a lie. That frightened him more than anything else.

Jacob gives a sharp, forced chuckle. “I’m impressed, kid. You’re doing exactly what I want you to.”

He grimaces in pain as he digs at one of his cuticles. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re getting stronger. You should be proud of that.” A quick look to the side shows Staci covering up his bleeding thumb with his other palm, and Jacob moves a hand from the wheel to Staci’s wrist. Twisting it painfully, he pushes it between the seat and the front console and glares at Staci before returning his attention to the road. “And stop picking your fingers apart. You get ‘em infected, I’ll have to cut ‘em off.”

Staci stammers out an apology and wipes his hand on his pants.

Jacob hushes him before he stutters any more. “Enough. I need you clear for a project back at the base.”

Staci streaks blood across the bridge of his nose as he rubs one of his eyes - as if his face wasn’t wretched-looking enough at this point - and he nods quickly. “I’m clear, sir.”

“Better be,” Jacob says as he pulls off onto the exit for the veteran’s center. “Now stop talking. You’re gonna need to save that voice.”

* * *

The words set fire to Sasha’s blood and stop her in her tracks as she creeps toward the F.A.N.G. Center with Jess and Sharky at her side.

_“My name is Deputy Staci Pratt of the Hope County Sheriff’s Department.”_

She curses venomously in Spanish and launches herself off her heels, but Jess grabs her by the back of her shirt and pulls her back.

“Let me go! _Let me go!_ ”

“Slow down! You need to stop and think about this!”

_“I was brought here under false pre… pretenses. I was fed… lies about Joseph Seed and his family.”_

The recording continues over the loudspeakers, and the sound of Peggies laughing as Staci stutters through his confession. Big words weren’t always his forte, but he never stammered like this as far as Sasha could remember. She can’t imagine him sitting in front of the microphone, maybe with a gun to his head, maybe with a knife at his throat, maybe just terrified into submission… and to hear these halfwitted, unwashed, motherless psychopaths _laughing_ at him—

She jerks away from Jess and skids down the rocks, screaming at the cultists below. Sharky follows her with his flamethrower in one hand and a molotov in the other, and he takes most of the enemy attention on himself while Sasha flanks them. Soon enough, the radio message is drowned out by yelling and blaring sirens as the Peggies call in reinforcements.

Jess swears under her breath and starts picking off any Peggies who come into view. As she slowly presses forward into the outpost, Sasha’s yelling only gets more frantic and Sharky’s cheering only gets louder.

By the time the air has cleared of smoke and all that’s left are bodies on the ground, Jess finds Sasha pressed up against a radio in one of the buildings with a makeshift tourniquet around her right arm. She’s bloody and scratched and her face is dusty and bruised, but it doesn’t seem to bother her as she rests her head atop the table next to the radio.

_“—my name is Deputy Staci Pratt of the Hope County Sheriff’s Department, and I will train, I will kill, and I will sacrifice in the name of the Father and the Project at Eden’s Gate.”_

Jess exhales softly and settles her hand on Sasha’s shoulder. “How many times have you listened to that?”

Sasha doesn’t respond as the message loops once again.

“I wasn’t countin’ too good,” Sharky begins from his place by the door, “but maybe six or seven?”

With a quiet sigh, Jess reaches over Sasha and switches the radio off. “We might be too late, Dep. You have to understand that.”

She shivers with the force of a heaving cry and she slams her hand down on the table. “No! We _aren’t_. We are _not_. He’s better than that. He—”

“Jacob Seed can break _anybody_.”

“Not Staci. _Not_ Staci!” She stands up and pushes the chair back so hard it rattles against the wall, and she rakes her hand back through her hair before shakily saying, “We need to keep fighting. Where else can we go? What’s gonna hurt Jacob the most?”

Jess looks solemnly at Sasha. “I know how bad you want him back, but you can’t keep being reckless like that. You could've died, and you’re no use to us dead.”

Sasha lets her eyes close softly and she crosses her arms. “I watched them take him, Jess, and I didn’t do _anything_ to stop it.”

“You couldn’t have.”

“I was _right there_.”

“And there were how many of them? And how many of you?” Jess sets her hands on her hips and leans back against the desk. “Listen, I’ll do whatever I can to help you rescue your friend, but you can’t count on him being… _okay_ after all this. That speech of his sure sounded convincing.”

“He was reading off a script. I know it. Or someone was telling him what to say, or-or-or _whatever_ it was. He just… he wouldn’t fight for Jacob. _Ever_.”

“You can’t be sure with that motherfucker.”

“I’m sure with Staci.” Sasha opens the door and waves Jess out first. “Besides…” She chuckles sadly. “He’s never used the word ‘pretenses’ in his life; he wouldn’t start now.”

Jess scoffs as she steps outside. “Hmph. Now _that,_ I understand. Just let me get some more arrows, and we’ll hit the Ranger station.”


	7. See You Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of violence in this chapter. Warnings apply for plenty of punching and a non-graphic depiction of an injury while it is inflicted. I'm uploading two chapters to make up for the misery I inflicted on Sasha today!

Jacob’s glancing over a list of failed recruits when it happens. One of the Chosen - a man with a shovel with edges he’d serrated with his own two hands - bursts into the office and cheers, “We got her, sir!”

Jacob lets the paper fall back into a stack he’d been asked to look over by last week. “Who?”

“The last deputy. Caught her outside the ranger station. Name tag says ’S. Rook.’”

Jacob rises from his chair. “Show me.”

Pratt’s curled up in the corner of his room when Jacob passes, but he scrambles to his feet as soon as those combat boots march down the hall. Bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived, he stares at Jacob, awaiting an order, and Jacob snaps his fingers and points to the ground beside his feet.

Pratt runs to his side and follows closely, hands folded, head down, and a smirk crosses Jacob’s face as he follows his Chosen toward the new girl’s cage. This has every opportunity to get out of hand, but it’ll solidify Pratt’s place in the army.

They pass Cooke’s cage to find her resting after her training, and Pratt looks wistfully at her as she groans in her sleep.

“Eyes up, kid,” Jacob orders, and Pratt’s eyes snap to the back of Jacob’s head.

“Yes, sir.”

“Hold.” He stops in front of the most recently occupied cage and turns Staci around to face its resident. “Eyes up.”

A tense moment passes as Sasha recognizes him, and then her demeanor changes entirely. She screams with all of her fury and she throws herself at the bars, reaching outward like a snake lurching up with venom dripping from its fangs.

“Let him go!” she roars, voice rough and scratchy. “You _monster!_ Let him go!”

In a small, trembling voice, Staci murmurs, “No, Sasha…”

Jacob places a firm hand on Pratt’s chest, pushing him back.

“What have you done?” Sasha yells as loudly as her cracking voice will allow. “What did you do to him? _What did you do!?”_

“Shhh.” Jacob reaches past the bars and claps his hand over her mouth, fingers digging into her cheeks. “ _Shhh_. I hurt him—“

She bellows with rage, muffled by his dirty palm.

He squeezes her cheeks harder, bruising her soft skin. “Quiet, quiet—I hurt him on the first day so I could see how strong he was.”

Sasha growls against Jacob’s hand, cursing at him inaudibly as he clamps her mouth shut.

“And then— _shh, shh_ —then I started teaching him how to be stronger.” Leaning in, he rasps, “If you _love_ him, shouldn’t you want that?”

She howls viciously and bites down as hard as she can, and Jacob withdraws his bleeding hand with a chuckle. “Shit, you’ve got fire in you. Lots of it.” He motions to the Chosen behind him. “Knock her out and set her up on the island. I’ll be there in an hour.”

She lashes out as soon as he leaves, hands thrusting out through the bars, and despite himself, Pratt latches onto them. “When you get a chance, run,” he whispers frantically. “Leave me and run. I don’t matter if you aren’t safe, you understand? I don’t matter _if you aren’t safe._ ”

The Chosen wraps his arms around Pratt’s waist and tries to pull him away, but he digs in his heels and grasps Sasha’s arms. “Just do what he says! _Just do what he wants!”_

Jacob himself steps in and pulls Staci away, still calling to her. He grips her by the fingers until Jacob finally manages to pry them apart, and the Chosen enters the cage. As the blow of his shovel lands with a sickening crack, Staci cries out as if he’s the one in pain.

Jacob lets him go. It’s a mistake. Staci runs headfirst at the Chosen, this _one_ bastard who’s haunted him ever since the warrant, and knocks him to the ground. It’s futile since Sasha is already unconscious, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t fight for her.

He lands a solid one-two hit on the Chosen before Jacob gets involved. He may call Staci weak, but he couldn’t be more wrong. Staci clings to the Chosen’s vest with one hand and lands punch after punch with the other until his knuckles are bleeding and Jacob finally manages to pry him off. He spits at the Chosen as Jacob holds him back.

“Take him, too,” Jacob orders, and the Chosen all too happily takes his shovel to the side of Staci’s head. He falls beside Sasha on the ground, and as his vision blurs, he gingerly wraps his first two fingers around hers.

And that’s all Jacob needs to realize _exactly_ what will strengthen Pratt.

* * *

 Sasha wakes up with a roaring headache. She tries to move and finds herself tied to a chair - itself bolted to the floor - and she exhales roughly.

“ _Mierda_.”

Her eyes dart around the dimly lit room despite her aching head, and when she sees Staci, relief flutters through her like hummingbirds.

“ _Dios mio, ¿estás bien?_ ” Her heart breaks with a vicious snap at the sight of the wounds on his face, and though she wills them not to, her tears are already spilling. “Staci?”

“You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay,” he repeats, almost obsessively. “You’ll be okay.”

“Staci, talk to me, please.”

“You’ll be okay. You’ll be—you’ll be okay.” He interrupts himself with a hiccup brought on by panic. “You’ll be okay.”

“ _We’ll_ be okay. _We_ will. _Together_.”

The door swings open and Jacob enters, a flat look on his face as he claps a hammer against his open palm. “Very touching,” he says, gesturing at Sasha with the hammer, “And that is exactly the sort of thing holding you both back. You leave that behind, you’ll both be a hell of a lot stronger.”

“I don’t care. Let him go.”

Jacob spins Staci’s chair - not bolted down like Sasha’s - and with a grunt of effort, scrapes it across the floor so he’s facing her.

“That’s not how this works,” Jacob sighs, placing a floor lamp directly between them and turning it on. “I’ve got a couple rules for you before we begin.”

“Shove your rules,” she spits.

“I don’t figure you’ll play by ‘em, but I know your boyfriend here will.” He lets his hand thud against Staci’s shoulder, and Staci flinches at the touch. “See, we’re gonna do a little experiment. You’re going to suffer a little so I can see how much you can take, just like I did with this guy.” He lifts the hammer and does a few test swings - and she doesn’t shy away from any of them. “Hmm. Not much scares you, does it? I like that.”

“What’s your game?” she asks with a sneer. “What happened to you that you think _this_ makes any sense at all?”

“Look at you, tryin’ to get inside my head. You need to stop thinkin’ so much and _act_.” A smirk crosses his face for a moment as he adds, “Maybe if you had, you and Pratt here wouldn’t be in this predicament, now, would you?”

“Shut up. Shut _up!_ ”

He presses a finger to her lips. “Don’t you go upsetting yourself, now. This is only _half_ about you.” He withdraws his hand before she tries to bite him again, and he curls his fingers around the hammer head. “See, I’m not tryin’ to get you to… _submit_ like my brother John would do. I want to see how much punishment you’ll take - and how much Pratt’s gonna _let_ you take.”

“No. No! You leave him out of this, monster, you leave him alone!”

Quietly, Staci whispers her name, and she falls silent immediately.

“You’ll be okay,” he says again, and she exhales shakily.

“Say _nothing_. You hear me?” She stares at him intently, brown eyes meeting his with an intensity unmatched by anything he’s ever seen. “Not a word. I’ll be alright. _We’ll_ be alright.”

“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t,” Jacob says, and without a moment’s warning, he hits her in the face with a closed fist.

She spits blood at him. He punches her in the chest. With shaking hands, she raises both her middle fingers.

Staci’s knuckles are already white and rapidly turning blood-red as he grips the arms of the chair. The heartache feels as sharp as shards of glass in his blood as he watches Jacob hit Sasha. Somehow, all he can think of is _eyes up, eyes up, eyes up._ This is all his fault. She could’ve been safe. If he didn’t care for her, she wouldn’t be here. She could’ve been safe. She could’ve been happy. He remembers the sound of her laughter like he only heard it yesterday, but then it turns to screaming - she’s screaming for _him_ as he’s pulled from the helicopter, and _now_ she’s staring at him with bloodshot eyes as Jacob hurts her over and over and over—

She isn’t really looking at him at all. She’s just doing her best not to show the pain she’s in.

“This won’t change anything!” She groans as Jacob takes a break after the fifth hit. She coughs and spits out another mouthful of blood as her eye begins to swell. “You think hurting people is gonna make anything better? You think this is how you protect your family?”

Jacob halts at the words, frozen in place.

“You can’t protect anyone like this. Not your soldiers. Not your brothers. _Mierda_ , John’s probably dead by now!”

Jacob whirls around with a primal roar and smashes his hammer into Sasha’s right hand, shattering two fingers immediately on impact. and sending a shock of blinding pain up her arm. The scream that follows is loud enough to send the birds on the roof scattering, and it lasts until Sasha’s voice gives out a few ear-splitting seconds later.

All Staci can do is watch as she falls limp against the chair, eyelids fluttering. He is still, watching with wide eyes as Jacob throws the hammer to the ground and whistles sharply for the guards posted outside.

He wants to close his eyes. He can’t.

“You did good,” Jacob mutters, casting a glance back at Staci.

The tears on his cheeks imply otherwise. But if he doesn’t say anything, Jacob won’t hear his voice shaking. That’s all he can hope for.

* * *

Jacob sneaks a cigarette from a bag of personal belongings from his recruits, and he exhales wearily as he sits outside Marilyn Cooke’s cage. He’s been here for an hour already, letting his Chosen clean up the mess inside the island house where Rook and Pratt were tested. 

Though it looks like _he_ was the one who ended up facing his demons.

Marilyn’s voice rings clear to him, though thick with sleep and cracking from a lack of water.

“Bum a smoke?”

He chuckles softly. “Why the fuck not? It’s been that kind of day.” He passes the cigarette back to her and she blinks at him in surprise.

“I’m still sleepin’, and dreamin’ to boot. Gotta be. Jacob fuckin’ Seed did _not_ just pass me a cigarette.”

“If you don’t want it—”

“Ain’t never said that.” She snatches the cigarette and takes a long, grateful drag, exhaling smoke with a soft sigh. “ _Mmmmm._ Fuck, yes. Menthols?”

“I guess. Ain’t mine.”

“Huh.” She takes another puff and reluctantly hands it back through the bars of the cage, then lies down on her back, peering up at him. “Been that kinda day, you said? Wonder what could make the big, bad J. Seed slip back into old habits. Tired of fuckin’ up lives, are we?”

He answers with a noncommittal grunt.

“Yeah, bet you are. Fuckin’ up _your_ life, too, ain’t it?”

This time, he doesn’t answer at all. Just asks, “Did you kill John?”

She tenses up. “John’s dead?”

Jacob sighs and closes his eyes. “Guess you didn’t, then.” He hands her the cigarette and stands up with a groan of effort. “I got some calls to make. Keep the damn thing. Hate menthols anyway.”

“Had a hell of a time, haven’t ya?” She leans up against the edge of the cage, fingers curling around one of the bars. “Don’t start thinkin’ you don’t deserve whatever put you in this mood… but…”

He turns his head back toward her, one eyebrow raised skeptically.

She exhales quietly. “Ah, hell, I’d almost feel bad for you.”

“Would you now?”

“I said _almost_.”

“Hmph. Goodnight, Cooke.”

“G’night, big guy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find more of Marilyn and Jacob's banter in their fic, Snake Eyes!


	8. Halcyon

Staci cradles Sasha’s head in his lap as he leans up against the corner of the cage they’d been thrown into, and as his tears fall onto his arms, he whispers over and over to her unconscious frame how sorry he is. How he never meant for this to happen to her. How he deserved this but she didn’t, no, not her, _never_ her. How she was too good - for this, for Jacob, for… _him_.

And when she wakes, he presses his cheek to hers and tells her everything all over again.

Her hand hurts, and that’s a serious understatement. Nothing has _ever_ hurt this badly in her life - not even that time she was stomped on by an angry moose. Her eyes water from the pain and it’s difficult to breathe, not only with the bruises from Jacob’s beating on her chest, but with the sobs working their way into her throat. Nevertheless, she manages to push herself up into a sitting position and she curls around Staci, holding him as best she can as he buries his face in her uninjured shoulder.

“We’ll be alright,” she promises. “We’ll both be alright. We’ll get out of here together.”

“I’m so sorry,” he whimpers, muffled by her skin. “I’m so, so, so sorry.”

She runs trembling fingers through his dirty hair. “Don’t be sorry. This isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Things just happen and we can’t control them, but it’s alright. We’re together. We’ll be safe as long as we’re together.”

He wants to believe it. He really does. But he _can’t_. “I could’ve said something,” he insists. “I should’ve—I should’ve stopped him. I should’ve _killed_ him.”

“He only would’ve hurt you, too. I told you to stay quiet, remember?” She draws away and cups his face in her useable hand so she can look into his eyes. With the pad of her thumb, she brushes away his tears. “You were so brave, Staci. You _are_ so brave. I’m… I…” Her voice breaks and she blinks a tear away. “Listen. Do you remember the first time we worked a car accident together?”

He forces memories back through his brain, pushing out Jacob’s unrelenting commands. He focuses on Sasha’s eyes until he can safely close his own, and when he finds the night she’s thinking of, he nods to her.

“New Year’s. 2015?”

“That’s right.” She forces a smile, as reassuring as she can make it with the pain still coursing through her. “I saw a broken mirror on the road and I started bawling. I just wouldn’t snap out of it.”

Staci feels a pang of guilt as the events of the night come racing back. “I yelled at you. I shouldn’t have—”

Her fingers softly curl along his roughly stubbled jawline. “Shhh. That’s not why I mentioned this. You helped me. I wasn’t brave or strong at all, but _you_ were.”

He shakes his head vigorously. “No, no, _no!_ I was angry, I was tired, I just wanted you to stop—”

“And I did stop, didn’t I?” She stares at him intently. “I stopped crying because _you_ reminded me where I was. When I saw that mirror, I was just a child again. I was scared. And then _you_ pulled me back. I wouldn’t have recovered as well as I did if you weren’t there to help me.”

He coughs on his own sticky breath. “You looked so _hurt_ —hurt like I hit you, like-like _he_ hit you, oh, God, Sasha, I let him—”

“Staci, Staci, shhh. Stop. You’re gonna drive yourself crazy like this.” She can barely feel her fingers at all, but the pain is still radiating up her arm and into her chest like she’s been shot. Still, she does her best to hide her wince as she slips her injured arm across his shoulder. “You didn’t ‘let him’ hurt me. He just… hurt me. He’s been hurting you, too.”

“But _you_ don’t deserve it!” he cries, voice loud and harsh.

She brushes another tear off his cheek with her thumb. “Staci, neither do you. We just have to make it out of here.”

“I’ll… I’ll come check on you, okay? Every day. And I’ll get you out of here. I promise. I _promise_.”

“We’ll get out of here together,” she says again. “ _Together_ , you understand?”

“You can’t come back,” he whispers. “You can’t come back.”

“Staci, hush.” She runs her hand down the back of his head and cradles the curve of his neck. “Once we’re free, we’ll never come back. But we’ll do it _together_.”

“I can’t… I can’t let him hurt you again… I—”

“Don’t think about that.” As she blinks away the fatigue creeping up on her, she takes a deep breath and adds, “Think about… think about the first night we spent together. Remember that?”

Slowly, he nods. “You said I looked handsome. You, uh… didn’t usually say that about me before we started… you know.”

“You were very handsome.” The memory brings a smile to her face - a _real_ one - as she pushes his hair away from his eyes. “You _are_ very handsome. If I recall correctly, that was the first time I ever saw you in uniform. You remember?”

His cheeks flush and a smile flickers across his face.

“You sure do,” she says with a quiet laugh. “I can tell.”

“You grabbed my collar and pulled me down to eye level… which took a minute or two…”

She chuckles and playfully swats his arm. “Shut up! You’re just too tall.”

“Yeah, but you’re… really little, Sass.” The nickname sounds sweet on his tongue, and his smile returns, if only for a moment. Then his eyes close, and he turns his face away. “Sasha, I’m… I’m so sorry, bunny.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

He shakes his head. “There’s so much. There’s _so_ _much_. Even before… all this.”

“Well… _that_ stuff, you can apologize for.” She tips his head back toward her. “You made me walk home in high heels. That isn’t very nice.”

With a bitter, rasping laugh, he wipes his eyes with the back of his wrist. “Yeah, yeah, that was… not great.”

“Not great? Crashing our picnic with a high-speed chase was also _not great_.”

“The whole thing was a disaster.” He scowls, more at himself than her. “I’m sorry.”

She stares up at him, eyes soft. “Oh, Staci… I’d do it all again.”

“Even if the whole department laughed at us again?”

“Even if the whole _world_ laughed at us.”

He grasps her face by the bottom of her jaw, hands on her neck, thumbs on either side of her chin, and he takes her lips between his. He kisses her like she’s sunshine and he’s wilting, and his mind empties of everything but her. It’s like they’ve been doing this every day for their whole lives, like her lips are his home, like he knows her better than he knows himself. The kisses are chaste, but hungry; passionate, but soft. Lips only - no tongue, no teeth, no hard motions. They linger just enough to soothe and break away before it becomes too much. It’s everything their first kisses weren’t.

He relaxes more and more with each kiss, almost as if he’s melting with her, and she lets him pull her tightly against his chest. It’s like he’s wrapping himself around her, protecting her with a shell made from his own body. She folds into his arms and sinks into his lap, and eventually, he’s sitting with her draped across his legs as he leans over her to kiss her.

She pulls away for air, arms still wrapped around his neck, and she tucks his hair back behind his ear. “Was that okay? Are you alright?”

“I’m… I don’t know.” The answer takes even him by surprise, but he shakes his head and shuts his eyes tightly. “It was good. _You’re_ good. It’s just that…”

“Don’t.” She touches his face and he opens his eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking of, just don’t.”

“I can’t,” he confesses. “He _knows_. He knows about… _this_ and he’s going to use it against you, I know it.”

Her eyes grow cold as she looks up at Staci. “He can try. Every time he hurts one of us, he just gives me another reason to kill him.”

“You shouldn’t have come,” he breathes, fingers trembling on her skin. “You could’ve stayed away and you would’ve been safe.”

“Safe doesn’t matter to me if I don’t have you,” she answers softly, almost like a secret she didn’t want him to find out.

His blood freezes and his heart thunders in his ears, and as he concentrates on her face, bruised and swollen, his voice deserts him. So he just holds her, cradled like a child in his lap as she stares up at him with those big, round eyes of hers. He draws a map of her in his mind, savors every detail he can, from her freckled face to her frizzy black hair, left dry for too long. He lets her tell him tale after tale, stories starting with “remember when” and “back before” that ease his troubled mind until his eyes flutter closed.

They fall into a fitful sleep together, letting their bodies rest as their minds furiously process what’s happened to them through terrifying dreams. Each time one wakes with a gasp or a cry, the other is there to caress and kiss them, and they settle back into each other’s arms to nap again.

And when Jacob himself opens the cage in the morning and separates them, neither of them speak. They only share a look, one mournful look, before Staci is herded away and Sasha is locked in the cage again.

Jacob doesn’t let them see each other again for nine full days. And when food and water are served only once at a random time each day, and the passage of time is deduced only by the blazing sun, nine days seems an eternity indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr user @leavenopathuntaken illustrated a moment from this chapter in a commission. It can be found here: https://casino-lights.tumblr.com/post/180202202266


	9. Survivor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this chapter's pretty brutal. I did go into a bit of detail while describing the violence here, but I hope you'll agree that it fits the story currently. It's dark, but it will get better, I promise!

Jacob visits Sasha on the tenth day with Staci in tow, head hanging and hands folded in front of him. He stands silently behind Jacob as he sits in front of Sasha’s cage, and Sasha barely stirs as Jacob begins to speak.

“Look at that hand,” he says, clicking his tongue like a parent scolding a child. “Doesn’t seem too good.”

She uses her working hand to flip him off before letting it drop back to the ground.

“Still got that fire in ya. You just don’t quit, do you?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Hmm. Where’s that mouth o’ yours, huh?” He leans forward on his stool. “Guess you learned your lesson. Too bad it didn’t come sooner.”

She remains still and silent, staring up at the gaps between the plywood on top of the cage.

“Glad that ain’t your dominant hand,” Jacob continues calmly. “Thought for a while I’d just crippled a promising recruit… even if it woulda been better for your buddy here if I tied up all his loose ends.”

She wants to sit up, and her muscles are tensing at the mere thought, but she forces herself to stay down. The more he realizes he’s getting to her, the harder he’ll push.

“Well… good talk,” Jacob mutters. He whistles sharply and footsteps scurry toward him. The cage door unlocks and creaks open, and he coldly says, “Pull her out.”

Sasha’s eyes dart to the movement at her side, and before she can react, a pair of rough hands hoists her up into a standing position. She looks up to see the men holding her: one with a massive beard and the other with a serrated shovel on his back and a set of rotting teeth.

_Him. Jacob must trust him a lot._

As she struggles against them, they grab both her wrists and pin them to her sides. Another Peggie wheels a gurney with arm and leg restraints into the cage, pushing past a fidgeting Staci as he does.

At four-foot-nine, Sasha’s feet are left dangling high off the ground as she’s hoisted up between two Peggies pushing six feet. As they pass Jacob, he stops them and looks her over for a moment, making sure she hadn’t fashioned any weapons or tools… but he lingers one second too long.

With every ounce of strength in her body, Sasha pulls one of her legs back and drives her foot into Jacob’s crotch so hard his brothers felt it.

The Peggie with the shovel throws Sasha back onto the gurney and straps her hands down, but she lands a swift kick to his face and knocks out one of his crooked teeth. The other man sits on her knees, bending them painfully, but she spits into his eye. Finally, the one who wheeled the gurney out manages to wrap the restraints around her ankles, and he tightens them so her flesh bulges around the straps. The one with the shovel kneels beside Jacob, who’d dropped to his knees, while the other two hold Staci back before he can reach Sasha.

She swears at them all vigorously as they wheel her off, firing off Spanish insults like bullets. The last thing Staci hears is the Peggie with the shovel chuckling menacingly as he slams the doors to the main building behind the gurney.

It’s only moments before Jacob recovers from that soccer-worthy kick, and with a groan of effort, he hoists himself back to his feet and lands a heavy hand on Staci’s shoulder.

“I can see why you like her,” he says, with an edge of pain still seeping through his brave facade. “She’s tougher than I thought.”

He whistles for Staci to follow him into the Veteran’s Center. As soon as the door shuts behind them, a very loud, very crisp “ _¡Chinga tu Padre!”_ echoes through the walls as Staci sticks close to Jacob’s heels. His fists clench at his sides as a smacking sound follows, and the cursing fades out as Sasha is wheeled into a more distant room.

Jacob turns into his control room and he activates a blank monitor. Staci already has a sickly feeling, an educated guess about what’s going to be broadcast on the screen. As the static fades into a grainy image of the gurney arriving in a bloodstained kitchen with a pair of bolt cutters on the counter, that feeling overwhelms him.

“No,” he whispers, so low it could have been mistaken for wind. “No, no, no, no.”

“Fingers are broken,” Jacob remarks far too casually. “Gotta amputate.”

“Please.” Staci’s voice is shaking fiercely, but he holds his ground. “Please, don’t do this. It wasn’t her fault, I—”

“Bit too late, isn’t it?” Jacob switches the audio on. “You could’ve stopped this.”

Staci’s chest tightens and he narrows his eyes defiantly. “ _Stop_ hurting her.” His teeth are clenched - mostly to keep them from chattering - and his knuckles are bone-white. “Stop it. Let her go.” After a moment and a sharp inhale, he firmly adds, “ _Now_.”

“Look at you, growin’ a pair.” Jacob quirks up an eyebrow, nods in approval, and then takes hold of Staci’s wrist and twists it painfully. “You _failed_ her. Sure, you’re all brave now, but when it mattered? You were weak. You _are_ weak.” He lets go and crosses his arms. “And you know what happens to the weak.”

“I’m not… I’m not gonna say it again. Let her go. Leave her alone.” Staci swallows the fear slowly building in his throat - and the urge to vomit right on Jacob’s boots. “Leave her _alone!_ ”

“And what are you gonna do?” Jacob shakes his head and turns around. “I’m not killing her, kid. I’m just fixing my mistake.”

_Mistake?_

The sound of an ear-splitting scream crackles through the speakers and Staci covers his ears. It makes his knees weak as Sasha begs for mercy through the screen, pleading for the Peggies to stop as the one with the shovel takes the bolt cutters to her broken fingers. The crunch and snap is all too audible and it sends a tremor up Staci’s back that causes his legs to buckle outright. As Sasha wails in pain, he cries out along with her, and tears run down his cheeks as the bolt cutters clatter to the floor..

As her pleas turn to incoherent wailing, the Peggies wheel her over to the stove with one of its burners already glowing bright red.

Staci looks away from the screen. The combination of screaming and sizzling sends a wave of nauseating weakness through his body, and his stomach heaves once before he claps his hands over his mouth. His tears are freely dripping from his chin, his nose is running, and all he can hear is screaming, screaming, screaming, even though Sasha is unconscious again.

“You _are_ weak,” Jacob repeats, looming over Staci like a thundercloud. “Weaker than I hoped.”

He leaves his captive on the floor, body wracked with sobs like earthquakes in his bones.

* * *

Sasha wakes up two days later in a clean cage with a bowl full of crystal-clear water on the ground beside her. She’s been bathed and redressed in her uniform, now free of blood and grime, and as her eyes refocus, she notices a small card next to the water bowl.

She squints in the midnight gloom to make out the words written on it. In Jacob’s hasty scrawl, it says “Get well soon.”

She tears it in half with her teeth.

Her uninjured hand wraps around her other wrist as the pain radiates from her fingers - or where her fingers _were_ \- all the way into her chest. Through the bandages keeping her right hand cushioned and supported, she can locate the pinky, thumb, and ring finger with her left hand. At least the Peggies only took two fingers, and from her non-dominant hand. It could be a lot worse.

But, as Hudson used to say, that doesn’t make it any better.

She sniffs the water and dips one of her working fingers into it. Cautiously, she licks a droplet from her fingertip and finds it to taste alright, but she scowls and shakes her head. She knows better than to trust these maniacs. They could have put Bliss in the water, or God only knows how many other odorless, tasteless poisons. Hell, she could be dying right now.

She shivers at the thought, then realizes if she stays here much longer, she’s dying regardless of what Jacob’s cronies put in the water. And Staci’s dying, too. If she can’t get him out of here, they’ll either waste away or turn on each other, ending up like those vicious Judges that tear out each other’s throats just for Jacob’s favor.

But as she looks around, she only sees more cages with more of Jacob’s victims. Some are dead, some are almost there. Only a precious few seem truly alive.

She sighs quietly and lies on her back, curling up on herself like a child. Cradling her injured hand close to her chest, she brings her knees up and tucks her head in as she allows herself to cry quietly. 

She’s nearly asleep after several hours, stuck in that sickly half-consciousness where reality and dreams mingle in the worst of ways, when the clatter of a key in a lock jolts her upright. Despite the pain in her hand as she pushes herself up, she comes eye to wide eye with Staci between the bars.

“Shh!” he hisses abruptly, hands held up in front of him. “I’m gonna get you out, Sasha. I’m gonna save you.”

She struggles to her feet and reaches for his hand as the gate swings open. “Staci—”

“I gotta… I gotta protect you. I gotta get you out. Only you, Sasha. Only you. Only _ever_ you.” He swallows, draws a shaky breath, and squeezes her hand. “C’mon. I made a plan.”

As he sneaks her between the cages that litter the grounds of the Veteran’s Center, he holds her by the waist as if no other grip could keep her close enough. He knows when to tiptoe and when to sprint, which guards are attentive and which are not, and which shortcuts to take and which to avoid at all costs. She aches to think of how long it’s been and how much he’s been through that he has all this memorized.

He’s whispering to himself almost constantly, a strained and indecipherable set of mnemonics only he will ever understand. “two, five, no, not there… six… not the wolves, not the papers, not bars, bars-bars- _bars-bars_ … door, door, _door,_ there it is _—_ ”

Sasha chances a word. “Staci…?”

“Not yet!” he interjects, swinging open a side door and ushering her through. “Almost. Almost.”

When he pulls her into a dark room, he shuts the door and barricades it with a chair. With steady hands, he takes her by the shoulders roughly and looks her directly in the eyes. “You can’t go back. Whatever happens after this, you can’t ever go back.”

“Back where?” She places her working hand over his and squeezes it. “I don’t understand.”

“Here!” he hisses. “Back here, back to me. Back to _you_. You can’t… you can’t.”

“But—”

“You _have_ to go.” His eyes dart across her face, searching for something he doesn’t know how to find, and he pulls away with shaky hands. He thrusts a duffel bag into her arms, packed with as many weapons as he could find, a change of clothes, and a radio.

“I put supplies in there,” he says, words tumbling from him faster than a fountain. “Food. Water. Enough for a day - three if you ration. And pain medicine. Th-th-they had oxy-something, but I-I couldn’t reach it, but I got—”

“Staci, slow down.” Sasha stops him with a hand on his chest and stares up at him, her expression firm. “You’re coming with me. You know that, don’t you?”

“I… if I can’t—”

“You _will_.” She lets him go, but holds his gaze. “I told you before: it doesn’t matter if I’m safe if you’re not with me.”

“But _I_ don’t matter if _you_ aren’t safe,” he whispers. “You don’t understand! He-he already made me… do things, okay? I’m… I’m not…”

_I’m not me anymore._

“You still have a chance, Sasha. I-I’m trying to help.”

“I won’t leave you here,” she insists. “I _can’t_ leave you here.”

He shakes his head, almost as if he doesn’t believe her, and he grabs her by the wrist and pulls her along behind him. “There’s a truck,” he mutters, repeating it for good measure as he leads her to a small balcony overlooking the front of the veteran’s center. “I studied the route for weeks. It goes to one of the outposts, a different one every day… but it stops for gas at the same place by the lumber mill every time. That’s when you get off.”

“How are we supposed to get down there?” Her eyes follow Staci’s as he looks from the balcony to the truck a full story and a half below, and she finds her answer in his lingering grimace.

“Staci, we’re not—”

An alarm sounds throughout the compound, a harsh wailing that has Sasha covering her ears as Staci looks around for the source.

“No…” he whispers, barely audible over the blaring alarm. “No, no, no, not yet…”

That song, Jacob’s awful song, begins to play over the loudspeakers. Staci clamps his own hands over his ears and cries out in frustration. The door to the room rattles loudly as rapid footsteps approach from both ends of the hall. The truck below rumbles to life, and Staci’s eyes are wider than Sasha’s ever seen them as he looks from her to the door.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and before she can respond, he pushes her over the railing. He looks over the edge to see that she landed safely (albeit _very_ hard) on the roof of the truck, now rumbling its way through the gates. He sighs shakily and turns around as the door bursts open, and he slowly raises his hands into the air.

“Disappointing,” Jacob grumbles as his Chosen wrench Staci’s hands behind his back and start dragging him down the hall. “Looks like we have another washout after all.”


	10. The Phoenix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Toward the end of this chapter, we start to see that video Jacob broadcasts shortly before you finish his region in-game. As such, it's heavily implied psychological torture. But I swear, in two chapters everything will be better and I'll have some smut to make it up to you!

For the second time in a row, Sasha wakes up with a splitting headache - and now it’s nothing compared to the other pain coursing through her nerves.

She’s lying on her back, sprawled out like roadkill on something very hard and very dirty. As she gets a better look at its riveted surface, the events of the night come flooding back into her mind. Even her fists are still clenched. Slowly, she lets her muscles relax, ignoring their aching protests, and she opens her hand to find something pressing into her palm.

It’s a green plastic button, the same kind that’s on her uniform. Only she isn’t missing any buttons.

Then it hits her. Staci pushed her off the balcony, but she’d reached out for him. She’d grabbed his shirt with her uninjured hand and held on so tightly that she must have ripped off one of his buttons. He would have fallen with her. He _should_ have fallen with her. But he… he braced himself against the railing so he wouldn’t.

He stayed behind. _On purpose_. He stayed so Jacob wouldn’t realize Sasha was gone until it was too late. So Jacob would think only Staci was trying to escape.

She sobs aloud before clapping a hand over her mouth, realizing where she is. Not five seconds later, a bullet lodges itself in the corner of the truck’s roof. Sasha scrambles backwards and tumbles off the edge, landing hard on the dirt road. A pair of dirty combat boots stalks around the corner of the truck, but Sasha crawls underneath it to the other side.

The Peggie driver kicks her duffel bag, then grunts curiously. The sound turns into nothing but choking and spluttering as Sasha leaps upon him and crushes her arms around his windpipe. He collapses to the ground, limbs flailing, and she snatches up his gun and shoots him twice in the back of the head.

She stands up shakily, brushing off her knees, and she hoists her bag over her shoulder. She grabs the button from the ground beside the bag and shoves it in her pocket, and then she sets off with her back to the sunrise.

* * *

Joey sits idly next to the radio in the Spread Eagle as Whitehorse paces in front of the bar. Since they left the prison to fortify their position in Fall’s End, he’s been insistent that Hudson stay out of the fight until she recovers.

She told him she doesn’t know if that’s ever going to happen, but he just put his hand on her shoulder and told her she was doing her best. Typical Whitehorse. She wonders for a moment if that stubborn kindness of his is what shaped Sasha into the woman she is today.

Absently, she flicks through radio frequencies. The ones she gets in from the Whitetail Mountains are staticky at best, but she might as well try. She can tell Whitehorse is getting nervous - it’s been over two weeks since anyone’s heard from Sasha or Deputy Marshal Cooke, and they know how ruthless Jacob Seed can be. So every day, Joey sits by the radio and scans through the frequencies, sending out brief messages just in case either Marilyn or Sasha is listening in.

“This is Deputy Joey Hudson of the Hope County Sheriff’s Department,” she repeats every few minutes. “The Hope County Prison is no longer secure. Any Resistance members looking for shelter, safety, and supplies can come to Fall’s End. Sheriff Whitehorse and Pastor Jerome are leading the fight here. If anyone is listening, please respond.”

When the static on frequency 108.3 breaks into something that sounds like a voice, Joey almost doesn’t believe it. She taps the radio and tentatively greets the person on the other end, and Whitehorse launches up out of his chair to stand by her side as a crackling, distorted voice warbles through the speaker.

“…o? Hello? This is Deputy Sasha Ro…”

Joey smacks the radio so hard her hand stings afterwards. “Sasha?” she nearly shouts into the radio. “Hello? Sasha?”

“Joey?” Sasha’s voice sounds choked, even through the layers of static. “Signal must be…mountains. Can you hear me?”

“It’s weak, but yes,” Joey answers. “Your dad is here with me.”

“Come back?”

Whitehorse grabs the microphone from Joey. “Sasha? Are you okay up there?”

“Dad?” It almost sounds like Sasha’s crying now - and trying to hide it, most likely - but she clears her throat and coughs. “Dad, I’m okay.”

“Where are you?”

Only static follows.

Whitehorse adjusts the antenna on the radio. With the pitch of his voice raising in alarm, he repeats, “Sasha, where are you?”

“…found Pratt. I have to go back for him.”

“Go _back_? Sasha, what’s happening?”

“Can’t talk long.” It sounds like she adjusts something on her radio, and the static lessens just enough for Joey and the sheriff to make out her next words. “I’m not leaving without Staci.”

Pleadingly, Whitehorse replies, “Sasha, if you know where he is, we can help. Just come back home.”

A burst of squealing interference interrupts and Joey covers her ears.

“…jammer signals. Jacob’s using…can’t hear…try the next frequency up.”

Joey turns the dial to 108.4 and Sasha’s signal comes in more quietly, but with less interference. “Are you okay?” she asks, leaning toward Whitehorse and the mic. “Where is Pratt?”

“Jacob has him. I have to go get him.”

Whitehorse opens his mouth to protest, but Joey grabs the microphone from him. “But where _is_ he?”

“St. Francis…kind of training compound. He’s in danger. I have to…back in there.”

Whitehorse leans over Joey’s shoulder. “What do you mean, _back_ in there? Sasha, where have you been?”

“Dad…” she trails off, losing her voice to emotion instead of static. “Daddy, I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Sasha—”

“…don’t have a lot of time. I… I’ll…soon, okay? I’ll see…”

When only silence rings on the other end of the radio, Whitehorse and Joey exchange a look of concern.

“Sasha?” Joey closes her eyes and huffs impatiently when she receives no answer. “Sasha, come in.”

“It’s no use,” Whitehorse says with a sigh. “Dammit. She’s already got her heart set on it. And when she gets her heart set on somethin’…”

“I know, I know.” Joey cradles her chin in her palm. “I just hope she knows what she’s doing.”

Whitehorse shakes his head bitterly and turns back toward the bar. “You know how goddamn stubborn she is on the best of days,” he mutters. “And when it comes to Pratt, hell… there’s no mountain she wouldn’t climb.”

“You really think so?”

“Look at what she went through to get to you,” he says, sliding onto a barstool and setting his hat on the one beside him. “And you know how those two feel about each other.”

Under her breath, Joey replies, “Yeah, not like they’ll ever actually _do_ anything about it…”

* * *

Sasha exhales a trembling breath as the mountain air cuts into her exposed skin. She tucks the radio back into her duffel bag and wipes her eyes on her sleeve. The button off Pratt’s shirt leaves an indentation in her palm as she clenches her fist around it, but that small hurt is nothing compared to the residual pain where her fingers _used_ to be. The bandages Pratt had so tenderly applied to her hand are beginning to look dingy and frayed, and the ache beneath them only grows the longer she waits.

She’s hesitant to change them, just like she’s hesitant to put down the button. She tells herself it’s stupid, it’s absurd to hold onto these… these little broken promises of his. But if she can’t hold his hand, she’ll hold what she has left.

Those bastard Peggies took her shoes. Her _shoes._ So she walks along the cracked pavement of a mountainside road in nothing but hole-riddled socks. Her father used to tease her about the damage she did to her socks. He’d always poke her toes if he could see them through the holes, even as she got older. He’d “surprise” her every Christmas with a small stocking full of socks - a stocking stocking, he’d say with a chuckle that never failed to have her rolling her eyes.

Pratt said he left her a change of clothes. She drops her duffel bag and roots through it, unpacking pistols and ammo boxes and loose packages of jerky and crackers. She finds no shoes, however, and with a heaving sigh, she shoves everything back in and zips it up.

Her hand stings, so she pulls it close to her chest and tries to lay it flat underneath her jacket as she continues to pull herself along the highway. A few lonely cars pass by - some with the symbol of Eden’s Gate painted garishly on the sides - but none stop to either harass or assist her. She ducks behind a tree whenever she sees Peggie vehicles, but she watches them closely to see where they’re going. Several of them are carrying boxes marked with “THE ARMORY” in large hand-painted letters.

If “the Armory” is Jacob’s compound, that means he gets regular deliveries of cargo. If he gets regular deliveries of cargo, that means Sasha can stuff herself into one of the boxes and ride in… unless the Peggies check every box they get, which could very well end with her being shot on sight.

It’s worth a try, at least.

The next truck that passes, she tells herself, she’s going to try and leap into the back. When she hears the crunch of wheels on pavement, she’s already crouched and poised to strike. The truck stops as soon as she thuds into the bed, which launches her against the back window. She groans on impact and curses under her breath. This was _not_ one of her better ideas. The lack of sleep and proper meals is clearly starting to get to her.

“Holy shit!” A young voice exclaims, and Sasha glances up to find a wide-eyed teen staring back at her. “Is that the deputy?”

“One of ‘em,” a rougher voice replies. An older man with a thick beard comes into view and extends a hand toward her, hard with callouses and defensive wounds. “Hey, friend. Hope the brake check didn’t hurt ya too badly. You alright?”

Sasha pulls her knees to her chest, refusing the offered hand.

“We’re not Jacob’s men, Deputy,” he says calmly. “We’re friends. From the look of ya, I’d say you could use some friends right now.”

Cautiously, Sasha chances a question. “Who are you people?”

The teenager answers eagerly before the older man can stop him. “We’re Whitetails. The only ones who still give a fuck around here.”

The bearded man settles his hand on the teenager’s shoulder and sternly says, “Wheaty…”

“What? She’s a _cop_. If anyone can help us, it’s her!” He rolls his eyes and reaches his own hand toward her. And this time, she takes it.

“Whitetails, huh?” As Wheaty helps her out of the truck bed, she heaves a low sigh and nods respectfully toward the bearded man. “Maybe we could be friends, after all.”

* * *

When Jacob’s men got ahold of Pratt the night of his “desertion,” he was injected with Bliss and strapped into a chair. Again. And now as he blinks awake to blinding darkness, he finds that he can’t move his limbs, he’s sitting in something damp, and there’s water up to his ankles. Terror races through him all at once, and he inhales a trembling breath before looking around at his surroundings. All he can see are a few weak lights on the wall, which look like they’re made of concrete, and some staticky screens reflected off the water by his feet.

Concrete, clear water, screens, caged lights…

He’s in Jacob’s Armory. Prisoners don’t come back from there. He’s seen it firsthand. And right now, he’s looking an awful lot like a prisoner.

The door, a solid foot thick and even heavier than his fears, swings open almost effortlessly and Jacob steps through holding a video camera.

“You look like shit,” he says dryly, quirking up an eyebrow. “Smell like it, too.”

Staci wants to curse. To yell out the most vicious insults he can think of in each language he knows. But his voice fails him, and all he can do is look down at his feet in shame.

“Nothin’ to say?” Jacob pries, almost as if he read Pratt’s mind. “Shame. At least it’ll be a short broadcast.” He sets the camera on a table across from him and switches it on. “Now… What is the worst thing you could ever be?”

Pratt doesn’t answer, and Jacob urges him on with an insistent “Hmm?”

“Weak,” he mumbles, head hanging low on his shoulders.

Jacob paces in front of the camera. “No… it’s not weak. It’s _traitorous._ ”

So now Staci knows what he’s in here for. And he knows he won’t ever, ever be leaving. His heart sinks into his stomach, sending a splash of acid into his throat that he gags on, and his eyes dart from Jacob to the camera.

“Please…”

“Treasonous,” Jacob continues slowly. “Ungrateful for the mercy we in the Project have shown you.”

“I’m so sorry…”

“We didn’t kill you outright, and that is _merciful_.” Jacob prowls behind Staci and grabs his shoulder painfully. “I took you under my wing and trained you personally, and that is _generous_. You had a place in my bunker guaranteed once you finished your service to me, and that is _eternal_. And you threw that away for what?”

“Please don’t kill me…”

Jacob shakes his head and stands beside the camera. “You wanted freedom? You’ll have it.”

Staci’s cheeks are wet with tears and he coughs as they run down the back of his throat. He wants to smell the breeze after the spring thaw. To taste one of those shitty donuts Casey serves at the Spread Eagle every Sunday. To hold Sasha in his arms and feel her hair against his chin. To see his mom again, even once, tell her he loves her and he’s grateful for her.

He wants to go _home_. He wants to _live_.

“Please,” he chokes, “please, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, just don’t-don’t kill me. Please, don’t kill me, don’t—”

“Shhh.” Jacob motions outward, soothing him down. “I’m not gonna kill you.”

His heart leaps and he holds his breath, lips quivering. Maybe Jacob just wants to teach him a lesson. Maybe this is temporary. Maybe he’ll be safe again in a few hours.

But Jacob leans down, faces the camera, and says, “ _Time will._ This… Judas—” here, he spits the name like acid on his tongue— “will be offered no food. He will be offered no drink. He will remain here in this bunker until death. And when he finally passes, his bones will be fed to the wolves. This is the will of the Father.”

The words ring loudly in Staci’s ears, but not as loud as his own voice. He screams out as Jacob walks away, pleading for him to come back, not to leave him, to let him go, that he’ll be good if Jacob would just give him another chance—

As if by some miracle, Jacob’s frame shuffles back into the room a few moments later. He switches off the camera and he clutches something in his hand. It could be the key. It could be some food. It could be _anything_.

But it’s a strip of photo paper, showing three smiling faces, and Staci’s sniffling turns to unabashed weeping when Jacob drops it in his lap.

“Look at their faces, Pratt. Look at those friends of yours. Look at _Sasha_.” Jacob crouches in front of him, holding up the photo strip. “You look at this… and you remember that you were too weak to keep her safe. You remember how I took her fingers so _you_ could be stronger, and you remember that you _failed_. You remember how she screamed for you to save her… and then for _me_ to stop when she realized how weak you really are.”

He rises to his full height and whistles. One of his men enters the room at the sound, and Jacob mutters an order into his ear before leaving the room.

“I had high hopes for you,” Jacob calls to Pratt. “But you’re just as disappointing as the others.”

The Peggie plays back the video and trims it down so Staci’s begging and screaming is looped on the monitors behind him. After it’s done, he leaves, and he lets the door swing shut behind him. It closes with a heavy clanging sound, one that likely reverberates through half the bunker.

It isn’t loud enough to drown out Staci’s sobbing, either from the recording behind him or his own chest.

After a while, he can’t tell which is which.


	11. Skulls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's talk of what Staci's going through down in the bunker in this chapter, so you can expect some mildly graphic descriptions of miscellaneous wounds, psychological torment, and general unpleasantness. Next chapter is my favorite one, so stick around!

Even though Eli was kind enough to offer Sasha a bunk in Whitetail HQ, she politely declined and began stocking up on supplies instead. She stuffed so much food and ammo into her bag that it went from three days with rationing to five, and almost as soon as she’d entered the Wolf’s Den, she was ready to leave again for Jacob’s compound.

She hasn’t yet reached the door before she hears a small clamor coming from the common room, and she turns around to find Eli with his arms folded.

“I have a feeling I already know what you’re going to say,” she murmurs, lowering her head. “Something along the lines of ‘don’t go,’ right?”

Eli shakes his head. “I know I can’t stop you. But, uh… I think you need to see this.”

Sasha’s brow creases with concern and she slings her bag over her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Jacob… released another broadcast.” Eli looks distant, as if he’d rather be anywhere but here, and his voice is faint. “Your friend… he doesn’t look too good, Dep.”

Her heart splits in two and she feels fire in her veins as if they were pumping boiling water instead of blood.

“Let me see it.”

He leads her to the common room, where Wheaty and some of the other Whitetails are gathered around the small television propped up on the counter. She comes eye to eye with Staci Pratt, and her jaw tightens to the point of aching.

Jacob paces back and forth in front of the camera and Staci follows him with his eyes, wide and terrified. Each of his small, desperate pleas has Sasha’s ears ringing. Just a single second of it is too much, but it goes on and on and _on_. Jacob’s voice doesn’t even register with her until his face blocks her view of Staci and he details exactly what he’s going to do to him.

And as Staci screams - a primal, painful scream for help - Sasha feels nothing but rage to her very core.

She lands a powerful high kick on the television, shattering its screen with her boot and sending it crashing to the floor behind the counter. The Whitetails part before her like the waves of the Red Sea as she turns to face Eli. She straightens up her four feet and nine inches of pure wrath, looks him dead in the eye, and asks through clenched teeth, “Where were they?”

Eli’s own ears are thumping with his heartbeat. He clears his throat and swallows, then answers, “Probably the bunker. Couldn’t see much, but that’s where Jacob sends people who… disappoint him.”

Sasha’s eyes search Eli’s face as she recalls the crates and cages headed for the bunker. If she patrols the roads from the outposts to the Armory, she can find where the supply trucks stop and smuggle herself in with one of the crates. Or maybe hijack a truck and get them to let her in. Or wait by the Armory itself for a truck to start loading up and then sneak in - or blast her way in. However she does it, she needs to be quick. Staci won’t last long without food and water.

“Eli. I need a favor.”

“Name it.”

Staci’s voice still rings in her mind. _Don’t leave me here—_

She grits her teeth and narrows her eyes. “Get me a rocket launcher.”

* * *

He’s embarrassed. Of all the things to feel in this moment as his stomach threatens to gnaw itself empty and his dry throat cracks with every breath, Staci feels nothing but shame. His hands and legs are numb, his spine is crying out for relief, and he gave up trying to hold it yesterday. It’s cold, and his feet are stuck in a good four inches of rust-colored water, and his shivering has added friction to the duct tape around his wrists. He can feel it carving wounds in his skin every time he shifts. Add that to the pain in his waterlogged feet, whatever horrible infections he’s getting by now, and the rashes he’s surely getting from his filthy clothes…

Not even Hell could feel this bad.

Crying is useless, and with his own screaming on repeat on the speakers, he hasn’t slept yet. Or… maybe he has? He had dreams - at least he thinks he did. He had a dream about his mother. Two about Sasha. _Were_ they dreams? He’s almost certain he heard his mother’s voice. It’s just been so long… or has it? Was it just a few hours? Has it been days? Weeks?

No, he tells himself, the human body can’t survive more than seven days - at _most_ \- without water.

So that’s it, then. He really is going to die here. The last thing he sees is going to be the floor, or the walls, or his own grimy clothes. The last thing he hears is going to be his own voice begging for mercy.

 _Yeah, right_. As if mercy was _ever_ an option here. He watched Jacob shatter and sever Sasha’s fingers simply because he had touched them.

He glances down at his own hand, dirt and blood packed under his nails and caked on his knuckles. With a tremor in his wrist, he slowly curls his first and middle fingers down, imagining Sasha’s under his own.

 _I’m sorry,_ he repeats in his mind. _I should’ve been stronger, I could’ve saved you, I would’ve kept you from him…_

His leg twitches involuntarily as a shiver rattles up his spine, and the photo strip placed so precariously on his knee flutters into the water by his feet.

“No!” he cries, thrashing against his restraints. “No! Come back! Come back!” He reaches out as far as his fingers can stretch, but the strip curls up and warps in the water.

“I can’t… I can’t… oh God, oh fuck, I can’t lose you like this… not like this…” He chokes out a sob, voice burning in his dry throat, and he weeps silently as he falls back against the chair.

“I’m so sorry,” he rasps, barely audible over the tape behind him. “Sasha, I’m so sorry… I just wanted to keep you safe, I just… God, fuck, I love you a-and I-I never told you… you won’t ever know…”

“I’ve always known. And I love you, too.”

He whips his head up so quickly that it smacks against the back of the chair. “Sasha?”

Her eyes are bright in the gloom of the bunker. Staci’s fingers stretch out toward her as she comes into full view, a gentle, pitying smile on her soft face.

“How…” Staci swallows the ache in his throat and tries again. “How did you get down here? Wait, no, it-it-it-it doesn’t matter. You’re _here_. You… really came back.”

“Of course I’m here,” she says quietly, crouching beside him. Her hand ghosts over his, almost as if she doesn’t dare to touch him, and when he reaches for her, she draws away.

“Sasha?”

When she stands up and circles behind him, he catches the scent of peppermint on her skin. Her favorite lotion. He remembers poking fun at her for always filling the station with that smell.

_“You smell like a coffee shop at Christmastime, Sass.”_

_“I know! Isn’t it lovely?”_

_“Not in June.”_

“You’re so brave, Staci.” Her voice is soft and warm, like a blanket in the dead of winter. “I could never be as brave as you are. To go through all this… you’re _so_ much stronger than he says you are. He’s so, so wrong about you.”

He tilts his head quizzically as his brows furrow. “Are you…? Just… just let me out. We have to hurry. He’ll find you.”

“I hate seeing you like this.” She sighs through her nose and bends down so her head is _almost_ resting on his shoulder. “God, I hate it. You didn’t deserve any of this.”

Her hand drapes over his arm and brushes against his thigh. As he follows her hand to his leg, he notes her first two fingers, cut down to burnt stumps.

“It isn’t your fault,” she murmurs. “None of it.”

“He did it because of me. Everything he did to you, it was all because of me.” He stares down at the photos in the water, the paper wrinkled and distorted. His own face seems to mock him with that warped smile.

Her face falls into a solemn scowl, all teeth and narrowed eyes. “No, don’t you dare say that. You didn’t cause any of this. You’re strong. They _made_ you strong. _They’re_ the weak ones now. And you know what happens to the weak.” She slowly runs a finger down his cheek and steps away from him. “I love you, Staci. Just hold on a little longer.”

“Sasha…” he tries to reach for her, but the tape around his wrists holds him back and he claws at the arms of the chair. “Sasha, come back, please, don’t leave me alone! I can’t… I can’t… I can’t do this alone!”

“You already are,” she whispers.

And when he blinks, she’s gone.

* * *

Sasha camped outside Jacob’s Armory for three days. Eighty-four hours, to be precise, and every single hour that passed was one more hour she cursed herself for waiting. It’s not exactly like she can _help_ that; she had no key, and no trucks delivered anything to the Armory since the last shipment she saw before she’d been to Eli’s safehouse. Her launcher wouldn’t do anything against the bunker’s exterior - it’s built to withstand a nuclear apocalypse. A couple rockets would bounce right off. She ate little but protein bars and unsalted nuts, and she spent her every hour watching the road. She napped once on the second day, just for two hours, but it seemed like a lifetime and she hated herself for the time she missed. That could have been her window, and she slept through it.

But now, close to sundown on the fourth day, the crunching of gravel alerts her to a new vehicle nearing the bunker. With her binoculars, she peers out of her perch in the trees to see a truck pulling in toward the entrance, and her heart starts working overtime as she slings her bag over one shoulder and her rocket launcher over the other.

She sprints through the forest and skids down the hillside separating her from the armory. As soon as her feet hit pavement, she hoists the launcher into the ready position and fires it directly at the truck, blasting both it and the newly-opened loading bay doors to powder. She reloads the launcher as she storms the bunker, stepping over burning rubble as frenzied shouting emerges from within.

A group of startled Peggies stands ready at the inner door. She makes short work of them and crumples the inner door with another well-placed rocket. With her free hand, she reaches into her pocket and grabs hold of the makeshift deprogramming tape Wheaty gave her, and as soon as she reaches the control room, she finds the antiquated audio system and ejects the tape with some recorded sermons on it. She replaces that with Wheaty’s tape, and as soon as it crackles to life, she crushes the sermon recordings beneath her heel.

The music alerts the rest of the Peggies to her presence, but she drops a handful of proximity mines from the Whitetail armory like a breadcrumb trail. A series of explosions sound behind her, then in front of her as she blasts her way through the bunker.

She catches a couple Peggies with their hands over their ears looking confused. She pauses when she sees them and they flee from her rather than attack her like the others. Maybe there is something to that deprogramming tape after all.

She runs out of rockets after five more shots, and she drops the empty launcher in a dark corner before switching to her handgun. Luckily, she only faces one more patrolling Chosen before she reaches the bottom of the bunker. When she steps in ankle-deep water, her lungs seize with fear and she breaks into a sprint, frantic and careless.

The last door she opens is by far the heaviest. She has to brace herself against the wall and pull with all her might, but once her eyes adjust to the dim, flickering light inside the adjoining room, her knees wobble for a whole different reason.

There, hanging limply in a chair and covered with blood and grime, is her oldest, dearest friend.

She stumbles as she rushes to him, abandoning her bag atop a metal barrel near the doorway. She whispers his name as she gingerly cups his cheek in one hand and his shoulder with the other, and her eyes sting with unshed tears as he remains motionless under her touch.

“Staci, honey, you have to wake up. Please… please open your eyes for me, please, I can’t—I can’t lose you like this.”

Slowly, he stirs and his eyes flutter open. When they meet hers, they widen in shock, and he hoarsely manages, “Sasha… are you real?”

She muffles a sob with the back of her hand before pressing her palm to his cheek. “Oh… oh, Staci, I’m real, I promise. I’m here.”

His expression shifts to one that can only be described as relief, and as she presses a kiss to his dirty cheek, he stretches his hands out toward her.

“Let me get you standing, okay? Do you think you can stand?” She draws a knife from her belt and slices through the tape around his wrists, and before he can answer her, he lurches up out of the chair and collapses on all fours.

“Staci!”

She reaches down, arms outstretched, but he scrambles away from her as if her touch burns.

“No! No, don’t… I’m not… _clean_ …”

“It’s okay, it’s fine, I swear. Just take my hand—”

“He said I was weak…” Staci begins, standing up and glancing back at the console that keeps replaying his screams.

“You’re not.”

“He said I deserved this.”

“You didn’t.”

Quietly, as if to himself, he mumbles, “Maybe I did.”

“No, Staci, listen to me—”

“Maybe… I did.” He scans the room with his eyes, sets his jaw, and lifts a sledgehammer from its place leaning against the wall.

“Staci…”

With a mighty swing, he smashes the hammer into the center of the console, screaming, “Maybe I _did!_ _Maybe I did!_ ”

Sasha wants to cover her ears, look away, back against the wall. But she just watches him, eyes wide, even as he drags the sledgehammer past her and breaks open a gun safe with it. Even as he takes a rifle from it, as the muscles in his arms flex, as he looks at her darkly and hisses that _they_ are weak, they made _him_ strong, and _the weak must be culled_. Even as he empties an entire strand of ammunition into the generators powering the whole bunker.

And only when he grips her arm so hard it’ll bruise, only when he stares down at her with an intensity she’s never seen and never thought she would, only when he pulls her and says they have to go does she finally respond.

“… _Dios mio_.”

“We gotta go.” He pulls her by the arm until she falls into step behind him. “I know the bunker. Not well, but enough. Follow me.”

He leads her up two flights of stairs and through a maze of boxes and crates. The whole while, he looks back every few steps to make sure she’s there. All she can do is watch him. He’s covered in blood, and she gets the feeling most of it isn’t his. That leads her to worry about whose it really is, what Jacob’s done to him, what he’s been _made_ to do… what he _chose_ to do.

And as they battle their way through the upper floors of the bunker, she gets to see it firsthand. Staci Pratt, who once panicked over killing one man in self-defense, shoots first and shoots to kill. Staci Pratt, who once hid behind the door of his patrol car if a suspect so much as looked at him wrong, holds his ground like a brick wall.

He stands in front of her like a bastion, sturdy as oak. It comes as naturally as instinct, as if he was born knowing he had to protect her, and she doesn’t know if she should be happy about that or not. Every time he looks back at her, she notices something new. His missing badge. His split sleeve. His sliced shoulder. His eyes, soft only when they fall on her, tender in a way she’s never seen before, a way that says so much more than words ever will.

And she realizes she’s been in love with him much longer than she thought.


	12. When the Party's Over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a little bit of gore at the beginning of the chapter, but nothing too graphic. The only other warning I have is for smut! :D

Staci kneels at the side of the lake and scrubs his face nearly raw. He can still taste blood in his mouth, skin in his teeth, and when he looks down at his rippling reflection, he doesn’t see himself anymore. He recognizes Sasha, kneeling beside him with her hands on his shoulders, but the person she’s touching isn’t who she knew before.

“Are you alright?” she asks, soft as ever. “I don’t want to rush you, please know that, but we can’t stay here.”

“I know,” he rasps. He clears his throat and splashes his face one more time. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

“Are you… are you hungry?” She fishes around in her duffel bag and withdraws a package of month-old pork jerky. “This is all I have left, I think, but you can have it.”

“I never want to eat again in my fucking life,” he mutters, clutching unconsciously at his own neck.

“Oh, Staci…”

“It’s fine. Just keep moving.”

It was a blur when it happened, but it’s clear as day for him now that all he can do is reflect upon it. As they were just about to leave the bunker, let it crumble like it should have months ago, one of Jacob’s Chosen blocked their path. He hit Sasha over the head with a serrated shovel and bared his crooked teeth at Staci.

The one who captured him. The one who gave him his first dose of Bliss. The one who cut off Sasha’s fingers. As soon as Staci saw him, he let out a roar - a guttural, vicious, primal sound from the darkest place inside him - and flung himself at the man, wielding nothing but rage and his fists.

They fought. Mercilessly. By the end of it, the shovel was lost in some far corner of the room and Sasha couldn’t get a clean shot without hitting Staci. And he was starting to lose. But just as it seemed hopeless, the Chosen made a mistake: he bared his neck.

So Staci closed his jaws around the veins and _pulled._

He could almost hear Jacob’s voice in his head as he bit down. _We will cull the herd. We will become strong. We will train. We will hunt. We will kill._

Sasha screamed, but he didn’t hear her at the time. But now that they’re walking along the highway side by side, nothing but silence between them, he can’t stop replaying it in his head.

_Staci, no! Stop! Come back—_

Come back. As if she was afraid she’d lost him. Faintly, he remembers hearing her voice before he regained consciousness in the bunker.

_I can’t lose you like this_.

Maybe she did.

“Staci?” Sasha’s brow is creased with worry, and she’s clutching her own hand as if she has to hold it back. “Do you want to take a break? We can stop if you think we should.”

“Listen to you,” he murmurs, more to himself than her. “Everything that happened, and you’re still… _nice_.”

Cautiously, she reaches out her uninjured hand. “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets despite the grime and blood. “Don’t worry about me. I… I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”

He isn’t very convincing. He looks away from her, wetting his cracked lips and trying not to grimace in pain with every step. It’s clear he doesn’t _want_ her worrying about him. Even clearer, he won’t _let_ her.

So she looks down at the pavement instead and tries to shake the image of him with blood dripping from his teeth, bared and sharp like a wolf’s bite.

She doesn’t succeed.

They come to the north park entrance after a while, where Sasha radios Eli. Despite Jacob’s signal jammers, she manages a brief message: _Need extraction for two, North entrance._

She barricades the door and shoves a bookcase in front of the window. Only then does she sit, breathing heavily and trembling slightly. Now that she isn’t running from anything, her adrenaline is just pooling inside her, causing the tremors and seized lungs. She stands up again, eyes darting across the cabin. Catching sight of a cabinet marked with a red cross, she opens it to find a goldmine of medical supplies. She allows herself a smile and glances back at Staci, who’s staring blankly at the floor.

“Stace?”

He startles at the sound of his name, wincing as his muscles tense painfully.

Sasha’s brows furrow and she gathers some of the supplies up into her arms. She sets them on a small table, then drags the table toward Staci. “I’m gonna patch you up as best I can, okay?” she says, doing her best to look reassuring.

“You don’t need to do that.” His eyes wander to her hand, still wrapped in bloodied gauze. “Let me.”

She shakes her head, her curls bouncing lazily. “No, Staci, I’m going to get you bandaged up. I wasn’t asking.” Before he can protest again, she begins cleaning his cuts and scrapes with the sterile pads from the cabin’s supplies. She works gently and slowly, quietly humming a song they both liked before all of… this.

Eli’s people wouldn’t reach them for a while yet. Keeping the Wolf’s Den a secret is difficult enough without Jacob’s people tailing the Whitetails to and from the bunker, so they have to change up their routes all the time. Unfortunately, that means it takes more time to get from place to place, so when Sasha radioed Eli she wasn’t expecting an especially _prompt_ response.

But that gives her more time to care for Staci, so she’ll take it.

Once all his cuts have been cleaned, she roots through her bag to find the bandages she’d packed. As soon as she locates it, she opens the box and lays out a row of them on the table. One for a cut on his hand - she unwraps it, carefully places it, and presses a feather-light kiss to it once it’s covered.

With his free hand, he runs his fingers softly through her hair. “Not surprised your bandaids have rainbows and hearts on them,” he murmurs, letting himself smile.

She matches the expression and opens the next bandage. “I packed the essentials,” she says warmly. “Heart and rainbow bandages are essential.” She places this one on his other arm, covering the cut there before kissing it gently. “So are kisses,” she adds with a wink.

The next cut, noticeably deeper, is on his shoulder, so she unbuttons his shirt and slips the sleeve down his arm enough to allow her better access. Though she cleaned it once, she dabs at it again before placing the bandage with a small piece of gauze folded beneath it. Again, she presses a soft kiss to the bandage as if it would somehow soak through and knit the skin back together.

She knows it won’t. He knows it won’t. But that doesn’t stop either of them from feeling better each time she does it.

The next is a scrape on his neck, more minor than the others, but still deserving of a bandage. She unwraps one and places it across the cut, and with the slightest hint of a smirk, kisses this one as well.

He reacts by holding her in place, letting her linger, and she kisses the bare skin below the bandage. His fingers tighten in her hair as his pulse quickens, and her hand flattens against his chest as her breath hitches. She pulls away, looking up at him and grazing her teeth across her bottom lip, and the sight sends a wave of want through him. He takes her face in both his hands and kisses her deeply, impulse driving what he otherwise would restrain, until she pulls back and closes her eyes.

“I should… keep bandaging you up,” she says quietly. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Though unfortunate, she has a point. Staci leans back against the chair with a short sigh before agreeing and buttoning his shirt back up.

As Sasha wraps another bandage around one of his fingers, she can’t help but think of the sight of him in that godforsaken chair in Jacob’s bunker, lifeless and limp. “When I found you…” she begins slowly, carefully, “Staci, you asked if I was real.”

“I thought I saw you,” he answers. His voice is low, barely a rumble in his throat. “I thought… maybe it was a dream. Or… a hallucination. I thought I saw you. Maybe a… a day before you found me? Or two? I don’t… I don’t know how long I was down there.”

She bristles at the thought. “Too long,” she says icily. “I should’ve done something sooner.”

“Sasha—“

“Don’t. Please don’t tell me there was nothing I could have done.” She shakes her head. “I don’t believe that. I should’ve tried to get in a different way.”

Quietly, almost distantly, he says, “It doesn’t matter.”

“I could have tried harder, Staci—“

“It doesn’t matter.” He swallows and takes her uninjured hand between his. “I’m alive. You’re alive. That’s what matters.”

She exhales and a frown forms on her face. “You’re right,” she relents, “But I still… I hate the thought of you…”

When she turns her head away he brings her back with gentle fingers to see tears brimming in her eyes.

“Sasha?”

“I just hate the thought of you suffering down there,” she manages, choked through restrained sobs. “For so long you started to hallucinate… when you asked if I was real, I wanted to cry, I just…” A cry escapes her, and her tears spill down her cheeks in rivulets. “I’m so sorry, Staci, I’m so sorry I couldn’t… get to you… I tried, I wanted to, I… I’m so sorry…”

He leans forward and wraps his arms around her shoulders, bringing her close. He squeezes her as he hugs her, shutting his eyes and running a shaky hand through her hair while she sobs into his shoulder.

“I’m here, I’m safe now,” he whispers before pressing a kiss to her cheek. He doesn’t have to believe it - he just wants _her_ to. “I’m safe with you, bunny.”

She pulls back from the hug and wipes her eyes on her sleeve before a shiver runs down her back. “I’ll make sure you are,” she says firmly, staring directly into his eyes. “I’ll make sure you’re safe no matter what I have to do. No matter who I have to face. You _will_ be safe.”

“I know,” he lies. It’s not that he doesn’t believe she’ll do everything in her power to protect him - she will. He knows that. He just fears that she her best won’t be enough. That protecting him will get her killed. Or taken. Or _turned_.

Tires crunch on the gravel outside and Sasha bolts upright, glancing through the tiny gap she left between the bookshelf and the window.

“Dep?” A voice calls. “Heard you needed a ride.”

“Who’s the DJ?” She calls back with her hand wrapped around her pistol.

“Anyone but Wheaty,” says the voice, and Sasha smiles with relief as she waves for Staci to help her take down the barricade at the door.

***

The first thing they do when they finally reach the Wolf’s Den is tend to their injuries. Sasha’s bruises are examined for signs of bone breakage or nerve damage, her hand is thoroughly cleaned and cared for, and the few open wounds she sports (a graze from a bullet, a stab wound, and several various cuts and scrapes) are either stitched or bandaged. Staci’s care is more intensive: he’s given a rigorous checkup and a low dose of painkillers, then treated for the wounds on his poor waterlogged feet and several lacerations, fractures, and rashes.

And after all the examinations _and_ all of Sasha’s promises to Eli that she’ll take responsibility for Staci, they’re both _finally_ allowed to shower.

The water hits the shower floor with a smack and a sharp whistle as the plumbing rids itself of lingering air. Sasha steps in first, facing the wall and glancing over her shoulder as Staci follows her.

“You’re sure you don’t mind sharing?” she asks over the squealing pipes. “I just…”

_I just don’t want to let you out of my sight._

“I just want to stay together for a little while.”

“I’m sure if you’re sure,” he answers, turning his back to her and leaning his head into the water. “Fuck… I never thought I’d take a shower again.”

She chuckles mirthlessly. It’s all she can offer in response with the lingering thought that had she been a day - hell, maybe just an _hour_ later, he might have been right.

“Soap?”

Without turning around, she passes it back to him. “Take your time. I have an extra bar back here.”

“That’s… probably for the best,” he says, and sighs as he starts washing the grime off his skin.

They’re quiet for several minutes, just savoring the hot water and watching the lingering blood and dirt swirl down the drain. Only once their bodies have been completely cleaned, quite a while later, does Sasha find the nerve to speak.

“Stace?”

“Huh?”

“I… I just…” Her hand, aching where her fingers should be, lingers at her neck. “Ahh… never mind.”

“You okay?”

“…Yes. Yeah.”

He reaches back behind his shoulder and touches hers. “Sasha, I’m sorry for… _everything_.”

She pauses before looking over her shoulder. “You don’t have to be sorry. None of this is your fault. None of it. You hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“To get you back, Staci… I’d do it again. And again. And again.”

He swallows and rubs his neck. “Well… I’d… I’d do it for you, too. I’d… do anything I had to.”

_Anything._

She lets the words linger heavily in the air, and ultimately leaves them be as she lacks any kind of response.

A few moments later, she turns to put the conditioner back, and he turns to reach for a towel, and their chests collide with a thump that sends Sasha backwards against the tiled wall.

“Sorry!”

“Sorry…”

They meet each other’s eyes and laugh, and Staci catches himself glancing down before shielding the lower half of his field of vision.

“I’m not looking—”

“It’s okay, I wasn’t thinking…” Her gaze shifts, and for a split second, she’s staring down. With her at four-foot-nine and him at six, it’s not like she has to look _far,_ but that doesn’t excuse it.

“I don’t… I…”

“What, uh… what’s up?”

“Oh…”

“…Sasha?”

She’s still staring at his member, slowly hardening as they speak, and curving upward as it grows. He knows the look on her face - _intimately_ \- and those half-lidded eyes of hers tend to have that effect on him.

“I… um…”

He takes a tentative step toward her, and her hands fall away from her breasts. She inhales shakily, her throat bobbing as she looks him up and down. He’s wounded in so many places - not least of which, the bullet wound in his side - but with the blood and grime washed away, all she notices are his taut muscles. God help her, she knows they’re only so prominent because he’s dehydrated, and while she’d much rather he be healthy than sexy, she has to admit… he looks it.

He lets his eyes wander down her full chest before landing on her rounded hips and soft stomach. “You know, ah…” he wets his lips with his tongue and a lazy smirk flickers across his face. “My eyes are up here, right?”

She blinks and looks up at his face. “S… sorry…”

He curls his thumb ever-so-gently underneath her soft chin, committing her face to memory… as if he _hadn’t_ done so a hundred times before. “Shh,” he whispers as they lean closer to one another. “You’re fine.” He exhales quietly, a ghost of a wry laugh. “God, you’re so fucking _fine_.”

Sasha closes the gap between them and kisses him gingerly, her lips barely parting at all. Before she can withdraw, his arms are around her, one tight across her shoulders and the other resting comfortably at the base of her spine. Her fingers weave through his hair, thick and soft and _finally_ clean, as she leans back up for another kiss. Her nose bumps awkwardly against his and they laugh quietly before tilting their heads and locking their lips. He catches her lower lip between both of his, softly grazing his teeth across the delicate skin and eliciting a trembling sigh from her. Her breath is caught in his throat, his lungs fill with _her_ , and his hold on her body tightens as he clutches her more desperately.

No one will take her away from him again. _Ever._

She kisses the corner of his lips, then his cheek, then his jaw. Lingering there, she presses gentle kisses all the way up his jawline until she reaches his ear, where she nips delicately at that one particular place he loves, just below the edge of his jawbone and behind his earlobe. He moans against her neck, the sound muffled to the rest of the bunker by the creaking pipes and running water. As his lips find her pulse, he sucks at her skin and savors the strong thrumming under his tongue, his own heart racing with hers.

Her head falls back against his arm and he presses his lips back against hers to swallow her sigh. The vibration against his tongue has his fingertips pushing small bruises into her skin. With eyes shut softly and the sound of the water drowning out anything else, all she knows is him. There’s no light, no sound, no sensation other than what they share. It’s a kind of intimacy they’d never come close to capturing before, even on their longest of nights, and here they are, fueled by adrenaline and emotion alone, finally _knowing_ each other in the deepest sense of the word in a doomsday bunker’s bathroom.

Breaking away from her for a brief moment, Staci sighs and closes his eyes as his forehead comes to rest upon her shoulder. “Sasha…” he breathes, voice deserting him before he can even begin. “Fuck, I thought… I thought I’d… _fuck_ …”

“I know,” she answers quietly. “Oh, baby, I know.”

“I… fuck, I…”

Her lips brush his cheek as she embraces him even tighter. “You too.”

He lifts his head, his eyes meeting hers, and each finds the rest of their words in the other’s gaze.

“Can I…?”

“ _Please_.”

A tired smile flickers across his lips, and he crashes his lips back into hers. With one smooth motion, he brings his arms from her back to her thighs, hoisting her up so they meet at eye level with one another. She finds herself pressed between his body and the tile wall, melting against him as he teases her with his tongue. He pulls one of her strong thighs up over his hip and drags his thumb along the length of her entrance, more than ready for him and sensitive enough to make her shiver. He aligns himself with her and breaks their kiss to look into her eyes, each one lost in the other, and with her smile of encouragement, he enters her in one thrust.

She shifts, rolling her hips, and sighs warmly as she begins to adjust to him. He drops his forehead to her shoulder, groaning softly before drawing in a shaky breath. The sensation of her flesh, warm and soft and _welcoming_ , ignites a fire he’s never felt before, and he kisses her neck roughly as she wraps herself around him as much as she can. Their bodies move together as one, the cooperation creating a symphony of sensual bliss. Each of his thrusts is met by the rocking of her hips. They communicate with little else but soft sighs and moans for more, and they unravel each other like spools of red string.

His teeth trace pleasure across her shoulders and neck while her fingers play his tension points like keys on a piano. Her every touch eases him further while his every bite brings her closer to completion - just another step in the dance they’d practiced ever since their first night together. His thrusts come faster and harder as her moans come sharper and higher. She brings one of her hands down between their bodies to _assist_ herself - an extra step he usually did for her, but with both of his hands holding her up, she could excuse the neglect this time. Her head falls back against the tile wall and she keens desperately for him, just a bit more, _just a bit more…_

As he reaches his peak and trips headfirst over it, he groans deeply and bites where he had been kissing, his teeth carving into that cradle between her neck and her shoulder. With eyes shut tight and a mind emptier than a riverbed in a drought, he gives himself over completely as he fills her, and his bite tightens.

And it _hurts_.

“Stace— _ah_ —let go—“ She manages, tapping his shoulder as she struggles to bring one of her feet down to the floor. With their generous height difference, however, her toes barely scrape the tile. She doesn’t want to say it… but in those fleeting seconds, when he’s lost to his own euphoria, she _has_ to.

_“If we have a safe word,” she yawned as she stretched across the bed, “what about ‘rosebud?’ It’s kinda short, it’s not something we’d say normally, and it’s… recognizable. What do you think?”_

_“Huh… okay…” He ran his fingers slowly through her dark curls as his mind wandered from scenario to scenario. All different ways to make her cry out loud enough to wake the neighbors. “Wait, isn’t that from the movie we just watched?”_

_“You forgot already?” She looked taken aback as she pressed a hand indignantly to her bare chest. “Rosebud! The grand mystery everyone was trying to unravel!”_

_He grinned sheepishly. “What can I say? I tend to forget shit when I see you naked. Just happens. Your sexy self is way more important than… whatever that was.”_

_“‘That’ was a classic, you uncultured swine.” She smacked his shoulder, but still grinned shyly. It was true: each time she undressed, he forgot most everything that had led him up to that point._

_“So…” he began after pecking a kiss on her cheek. “Safe word: rosebud. What about a sign? Y’know, if you can’t, uh… talk?”_

_She eyed him with a sultry smile. “Listen to you, big talker. You think you can get me speechless?”_

_With a smirk and a gleam in his eye, he answered, “I know I can.”_

_“We’ll have to test that out,” she said with a sultry wink. “Safe sign… snap? Easy to remember, plus an audio cue.”_

_“I like it.” He squeezed her hand and sighed contentedly. “So… if I hurt you, or you ever get uncomfortable, or one of us just wants to stop… we snap our fingers or say ‘rosebud.’ That right?”_

_“That’s right.”_

_“So, uh… wanna shoot for it?”_

_“Shoot for saying the safeword?”_

_“What can I say? I got ideas.”_

With a pained whine, Sasha hisses, “Rosebud!”

Staci regains himself immediately and shoves himself away, nearly dropping her to the shower floor in the process. “Wh-what did I do?” He gasps, eyes wide. His eyes fall upon her neck… then the tooth marks he left, and the drop of blood beading up on her neck where one of his canines broke her skin.

“No,” he mutters to himself, rising into a panic. “No… no… no, no, _no no no_ …”

“Staci, it’s okay, I’m okay—“

“No, no, you’re not, _I’m_ not—“

“I’m okay,” she repeats urgently, reaching out for him. “We’re both okay—“

He snatches his hand away from her and backs out of the shower, hastily wrapping a towel around his waist. “Don’t. I can’t… I can’t hurt you. I can’t—I won’t, I _won’t…_ I can’t hurt you like I hurt them.” He backs further away from her, eyes wide and frantic as the taste of blood in his mouth overwhelms him. All he can think of is the tearing of flesh, the mess of skin and blood he’d become, the _monster_ he was capable of unleashing, just like when he killed Jacob’s Chosen earlier…

God, if he ever even came _close_ to hurting her that way…

He escapes to the door, slamming it before she can follow him even as she begs him to stay and work it out with her.

He wasn’t thinking. He can’t afford to not think. …No, he can’t afford to not think around her. So there’s only one course of action to take.

_He cannot be around her._


End file.
